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THE ENCHANTED GARDEN 


Pp Sentp 5atncfi jFotman 

NOVELS 

Fire of Youth 
The Enchanted Garden 
The Captain of His Soul 
The Man Who Lived in a Shoe 

TRAVEL 

The Ideal Italian Tour 
In the Footprints of Heine 
London: An Intimate Picture 






A girl was kneeling over liiin and peering into his faee, 
a girl with puzzled questioning eyes. 
FRONTISPIECE. See page 80. 



THE ENCHANTED GARDEN 


BY 

HENRY JAMES FORMAN 


WITH FRONTISPIECE BY 

A. D. RAHN 



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BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 














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Copyright, 19S3, 

By Hekry James Forman, ^ 


All rights reserved 
Published August, 1923 



Printed in the United States of America 


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Into my heart an air that kills 
From yon far country blows: 

What are those blue remembered hills, 
What spires, what forms are those? 

That is the land of lost content, 

I see it shining plain. 

The happy highways where I went 
And cannot come again. 

—A. E. Housman. 


Uhistoire d’un homme est done 
Vhistoire de tons les hommesf 

—Dumas : Le Vicomte de Bragelonne. 






CONTENTS 


PART I. THE ESCAPE 

CHAPTER 

I Flight. 

II Into the Unknown. 

III Myrtle Thornley. 

IV The Galbraiths. 

V Ranzo ......... 


PAGE 

3 

10 

i8 

26 

38 


PART II. A NEW WORLD 

VI The Search. 

VII The Storm. 

VIII The Girl of the Island . . . , 
IX The Superfluous Man . . . . , 

X The Stone by the Pool. 

XI The Lovers. 

XII The Reason for Bruce. 

XIII An Accident. 

XIV Thirty-Six Hours. 

XV Fugitives. 

XVI The Struggle. 


53 

61 

74 

92 

104 

120 

132 

149 

156 

158 

176 


















X 


CONTENTS 


PART III. THE CALL OF THE PAST 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVH Possessing the World.193 

XVHI The Smile of Irony.207 

XIX The Air That Kills. 215 

XX The Return of Bruce.226 

PART IV. MAISIE 

XXI The Land of Lost Content. 241 

XXH Happy Highways.255 

XXHI The Looming Distance.275 

XXIV The Gateway Again.288 

XXV The Circle.300 

Afterword.311 












THE ENCHANTED GARDEN 












THE ENCHANTED GARDEN 


J WORD 

Dike some alchemist who saw, or thought he saw, the 
grain of gold transmuted from a baser metal, or like the 
treasure-seeker bending over the treasure amid the dark 
soil he has turned up, I tell myself that I have hit upon 
the secret — upon one of the secrets — behind the appear¬ 
ances of life. 

Not that I believe life to be a formula, or an equation, 
or a capside. But it is, undoubtedly, something shaped, 
controlled and molded like a statue — monstrous in its 
simplicity, a strange god, gigantic, colossal, awe-inspiring 
before you learn the mystery of the priestcraft in the 
crypt beneath the pedestal. 

Here on my peaceful Island, surrounded by every in¬ 
strument and safeguard of tranquillity, I find myself 
suddenly lashed by an irresistibly urgent desire to write 
this narrative. A throbbing fire of eagerness pulses in 
my veins and I feel myself driven to an unaccustome\d 
pen. Call it a tribute, an escape, or a fragment of the 
eternal human quest for truth — as you mil. In any 
case, I believe I have found something and I burn to tell 
it. 

The secret, I am willing to swear, is woman. 

There are, of course, the motives and appearances of 
ambition, riches, adventure, travel — lust — a thousand 


2 


A WORD 


things. But to my mind they are a thousand disguises — 
masks, masks! Behind them all lurks the one fact, the 
one face and shape — that of woman. She is adventure 
and art, she is chance, Wcissitude, romance, home, travel, 
life and death. 

If life is a mechanism, she is the only goddess in the 
machine. On earth, in men’s lives, she is all, — the in¬ 
strument, the potter and the wheel. In human affairs 
she holds direct from the Deity. 

Why, I sometimes cry out inwardly, should she have 
so much power, the sorceress? And then I must laugh 
at my own emotional absurdity. Nevertheless, had I a 
son, I should give him hut one blessing ere I confided 
him to life: 

“ Heaven defend you in the women you meet! 

For in that one thing lies everything. . . . 

Every human being, so it is said, has at least one 
story, coidd he but tell it. And despite a host of short¬ 
comings and lack of skill, I am about to attempt the 
story of the one human being I know best and therefore, 
inevitably, least of all on earth. 


PART I 


THE ESCAPE 

CHAPTER I 

FLIGHT 

* 

He was an inch, perhaps a trifle less than that, under 
six feet, well-muscled, but by no means muscle-bound, 
with a squarish jaw, a slight wave to his chestnut hair 
and eyes of a dark and brooding blue. The slight for¬ 
ward droop to the shoulders in one of his height gave 
him peculiarly the effect of being forever bent on some 
secret quest that might not wait, but that could on no 
conceivable account be given away. A quiet controlled 
eagerness seemed to emanate from his young limbs, an 
eagerness, you felt, that life itself could not balk, — an 
eagerness for life. 

I see him now with those eyes and that sense of sup¬ 
pressed excitement that he imagined, poor soul, gave him 
almost the appearance of lounging, moving listlessly 
about,the wharves of Boston in an old and faded, thread- 
worn suit, especially unearthed for the occasion, looking 
for a ship. He was no sailor then, God knows, and 
scarcely a man, for he was in his nineteenth year. It 
was insufferably hot at the end of August and waves of 
heat were visibly drifting upward from the steel sides 
of dirty-looking tramp ships, from second-rate liners 
and from such other miscellaneous craft as lay along¬ 
side those uninspiring wharves. 


4 


THE ESCAPE 


Now and then a watchman on a boat would lazily 
gaze over the bulwark rail with a speculative aqueous eye 
at the approaching youngster and send a jet of dark- 
red tobacco juice into the dirty waters below, before 
the possible disturbance of answering a question. 

Uninspiring as were those docks and wharves, they 
were nevertheless a fairy palace to the boy. The strange 
smells of spices mixed with the aroma of leather, of wire- 
bound bales in brown gunny sacking, of coarse burlaps 
marked with mystic numerals, words and symbols, an 
immensity of crates and boxes, the grind of small truck 
wheels and the occasional shouts and swearing of list¬ 
less stevedores, — all these elements, drab enough in 
their way, combined into a powerful black magic that 
to the lad that hot August day was scarcely of this 
earth. 

He was looking for a ship,— this boy who had barely 
sailed so much as a catboat without guidance. He had 
begun his quest with Rowe’s Wharf because the name 
was a familiar one, but he left it with a rapidity of 
retreat that would have justified a leper camp, merely 
because he saw a glittering excursion steamer there with 
paddle wheels. That domestic trimness shocked his 
sense of decency and high resolve. He had come to 
seek he knew not what, and the placid old tub painted 
white for bobbing in home waters was a nauseating of¬ 
fense to him. 

The dirty rusty-looking tramps, smeared and blistered, 
farther on toward Charlestown, however, began to bring 
him a deep, a soul-filling satisfaction. These were of 
the Sea, — of the sea in the abstract, that forever lures 
life because it gives life, that has made and unmade 
men and nations, that is the source of dreams, more 
precious than bread. 

The lure of the sea, however, the disturbing call of 


FLIGHT 


5 


adventure, romance, was, if not secondary, at least 
strangely intermingled with another force working in 
the boy’s throbbing breast that hot August morning. 
He had been challenged and had proudly, not recklessly, 
with a defiant lift of startled eyes to startling eyes, 
quietly accepted the challenge. It was one of those 
cries so meaningless to the mature of any wisdom or 
experience, so ineluctable to the young — a dare! Where 
character has not yet hardened and proved itself, it 
rushes like hot liquid metal into the first mold set for it, 
however useless the form, however meaningless the re¬ 
sult. The perturbed youth that summer morning was for 
the first time in his life actively establishing his own 
character. He was looking for a ship and beneath the 
assumed quietude of his exterior the heady, rushing cur¬ 
rent of his blood was flooding his heart and brain like 
a mill race over a dam. All other thought was swirling 
and scattering like so much flotsam on the stream of that 
one impetuous volition. He must and he would find a 
ship. 

The steady succession of refusals, of vague and 
evasive answers, however, was causing a darkness like 
a cloud to settle on his enterprise, when suddenly he 
came face to face with a short, heavy-set man walking 
up and down on the quay beside a trim, yachtlike, newly 
painted green and white schooner. 

Something in his heart leaped forward and he gulped 
visibly before addressing this straw-hatted, alpaca-coated, 
heavy-mustached little man intent upon his own thoughts, 
a man whom he would not have remarked in a crowd, 
but who now, on a sudden, seemed charged with the 
gravity, importance and authority of all the world, — of 
the quivering mysterious future. 

“ Do you know who is captain of this ship? ” the youth 
inquired bravely and it seemed to him miraculous that 


6 


THE ESCAPE 


the words had issued so smoothly from his parched 
throat, from his dry lips. 

“ Why? ” and the little man cocked a quizzical twin¬ 
kling eye at him from under the brim of his straw hat 
that seemed to twitch suddenly upward in mocking chal¬ 
lenge. All the world, even to that inanimate straw hat, 
was bent upon challenging the youthful untried entity 
of his manhood. 

“ Fm looking for a job — a berth,’’ he corrected him¬ 
self — ‘‘ before the mast.” 

The little man’s face purpled a shade deeper, he threw 
back his head and laughed joyously. A humorist, evi¬ 
dently ! 

The young man turned scarlet to the ears and grinned 
uncertainly, painfully. 

“Before which mast?” demanded the little man 
crisply, his eyes still dancing with laughter. “ Fve got 
three there I ” 

It was now the lad’s turn to laugh, but he checked 
himself shortly. 

“ Oh, I don’t pretend I’ve had much experience,” he 
muttered. Then in a firmer tone, “ But I’d like to have 
— and I like this ship.” 

“ Like this ship,” repeated the other slowly, thought¬ 
fully eyeing him. “ Good taste, lad, good taste — that’s 
something,” he muttered, as if to himself. 

“ Brandon! ” he called, suddenly spinning around like 
a teetotum on his heel toward the ship. 

“ Aye, aye, sir,” responded a voice from the after deck¬ 
house and a smooth-shaven ruddy face under a visored 
cap appeared first and then a slim tall young body clad 
in blue serge followed it and stood leaning over the after 
rail. 

“ Come down here, Brandon — want to see you.” 

The man called Brandon moved forward, seemed to 


FLIGHT 


7 

slide down the narrow gangplank to the quay and stood 
beside them attentively. 

** Yes, Captain Flitch?” he murmured. 

Look at this lad, Brandon — think you could make 
a sailor of him? ” His voice now carried a new, a some¬ 
what exaggerated tone of serious authority, — the 
authority of the short man in power, always a shade 
over-assertive and always slightly amusing. 

“ Why — yes, sir,” said Brandon, slowly scrutinizing 
the lad from head to foot. Fve made sailors of worse 
material.” 

** How old are you ? ” the captain turned upon the 
youth abruptly. 

“ Twen—twenty-one, sir,” and he could have bitten his 
tongue for stammering words that he had so often re¬ 
hearsed both vocally and mentally. 

The captain shot a quick darting glance at Brandon 
but made no comment. 

“ Where are you from ? ” he demanded. 

** Up-state,” was the reply — “ from the country.” 

** Truth is,” announced the captain, lifting his hat and 
wiping the perspiration from his forehead with a blue 
cotton handkerchief, “ we’re short a man. Were sailing 
without one. And here is this-” he turned to Bran¬ 

don again. “ Question is, is a landlubber better than 
nothing at all ? ” 

Brandon grinned and glanced at the lad. 

“ Weren’t all sailors landlubbers sometime? ” The 
lad spoke up quietly. 

The words seemed to fasten the attention of both 
seamen for a minute, and then something hard, a shade 
chilly, like a glint of steel, showed in Brandon’s eyes. 

I’ll take him. Captain, if you want me to,” he 
snapped sharply and turned away, slightly lifting his eyes 
to the furled rigging of the ship. 



8 


THE ESCAPE 


“ Right,” crackled the captain in the same business¬ 
like voice. Where’s your dunnage? ” 

“ Not far away,” answered the lad and he felt an im¬ 
mense relief, momentary, triumphant, that immediately 
gave way to the heavy feeling of a grave decision. 

“ Go and get it then,” snapped the captain. “ Be back 
in an hour! ” 

The world of request was behind him. He had en¬ 
tered the world of command. He gave a succinct nod of 
the head, turned away quickly and ran for it with lowered 
eyes. Once under the shed of the wharf, among strag¬ 
gling stevedores in the cool, musty shade, he slowed up. 
It shot through his head like an arrow that there was 
time yet to draw back, to disappear in the indifferent 
crowd of the streets and return to the garden of sunlit 
everyday life. Who could trace him? Who would ever 
know? The thought was like a blow and, startled lest 
any one should see it, he glanced sharply over his shoul¬ 
der. Captain and mate were standing where he had 
left them, with their backs turned upon him, their eyes 
fixed upon upon the rigging, evidently discussing their 
ship. They had trusted him, believed in him, in his 
word. No, he could not fool them. This world of men 
into which he had erupted almost in a whim, in a wave 
of something like intoxication, believed in him. His 
Rubicon was crossed. If a streak of “yellow” lurked 
within his make-up, now was the moment to efface it 
forevermore. They had accepted his word. There was 
no going back. Swiftly he made his way to the street, 
boarded an electric car going in the direction of the 
North Station, where that morning, upon arriving from 
Adams Rock, he had checked his bag. 

The blind tumult in his brain made a somnambulist 
of him in the midst of the prosaic world that now seemed 
a jumbled incomprehensible nightmare. On a sudden 


FLIGHT 


9 


his eye would fall upon a face in the car, on a child’s shoes 
turned toward him while their owner gazed joyously out 
of the window, on a stain in the opposite seat, but al¬ 
ways these dots of old reality would recede to a pin’s 
point, to nothingness, and again his wild speculation, 
that could fasten on nothing outside, turned inward. 

“ It’s done — it’s done-” the grinding car wheels 

seemed to repeat endlessly. “ There is no going back! ” 



CHAPTER II 


INTO THE UNKNOWN 

How indifferent are the ministers to some of life’s 
greatest adventures! That came home to him only after¬ 
wards — well afterwards — when he thought of the 
dark close-cropped young man who had handed, with 
heavy briskness, his portmanteau across the counter of 
the parcel room in the North Station. The fellow didn’t 
know! 

With a new rush of dry-mouthed excitement that 
seemed to emanate from the pit of his stomach, he 
seized the bag and, like a mystic forcibly excluding the 
world from his meditation, he flung out of the station 
precincts and hurled it upon the rear platform of a car 
bound toward the ship. He dared not look back, dared 
not think or swerve by a hair’s breadth from his course, 
lest his challenged manhood should suffer defeat. An 
old familiar being, a he that had been, that was, must then 
and there die the death, so that a new he could be born. 
The old Roderic Whitford familiar to him expired at 
the moment when he gave his name to the mate upon 
boarding the ship and put his signature to a paper in the 
chart room. 

“ Roderic Whitford,” he had answered in a harsh 
uncertain voice that was strange to him, and the mate 
wrote “ seaman ” after his name. Then the old Roderic 
was securely dead and a new one, as unfamiliar and un¬ 
certain as the next hour, came tremulously into being. 


INTO THE UNKNOWN 


11 


No one had doubted him, no one had questioned his 
word or expressed the slightest suspicion of his promise 
to return. There he was and being taken for granted. 
He grew mentally at least an inch in stature. A tug¬ 
boat with a sort of waddling movement like a duck was 
already chough-choughing toward the ship, and dirty 
men aboard her were preparing hawsers. 

“ Better cast off, Brandon,” Captain Flitch came 
hustling aft. “We must be off. Oh, the lad!” he 
grinned faintly, ironically, as he perceived Roderic emerg¬ 
ing from the chart room. “Just in time!” 

The ship would have gone without him had he 
lingered! Promptly he lost the imaginary inch in 
stature! 

Brandon, hurrying away to execute his orders, flung 
something unintelligible over his shoulder at Roderic. 
Bewildered and useless, the boy stood for a moment look¬ 
ing dazedly at the captain. 

“ Stow your duffle forward, lad,” irritably cried the 
captain, who had no patience with bewilderment; “ take 
an empty bunk ” — and then, as though he remembered 
the quality of his new hand, Captain Flitch grinned 
quizzically with a twitching of his bushy mustache. 
“ And keep out of the way,” he added more kindly, 
“ till some one shows you how to be useful.” 

With head lowered to hide a crimson flush and his 
heavy portmanteau bumping against his legs, Roderic 
ran forward among scurrying sailors and all but fell 
down the scuttle of the forepeak hold, where he sat pant¬ 
ing for a space on his upright bag. Luckily there was 
not a soul in that dim abode to watch his darkling agony, 
for this was not the forecastle, but a sail room. 

How long he sat there alone in his misery he could 
not have told. He was aware only that with every at¬ 
tempt to think something like a volcanic eruption hap- 


12 


THE ESCAPE 


pened in the midst of his brain and the fragments of his 
thoughts flew up skyward and fell in a jumbled state of 
debris in the crowded precincts of his skull. Not being 
Caesar, he did not announce that the die was cast, the 
Rubicon crossed, or anything else philosophical. He 
merely heaved a profound sigh from the depths of his 
troubled being, like a groan, rose unsteadily and began 
groping and peering at the masses of spare sails. 

Hastily he scrambled out of this in search of the real 
forecastle. He found it stealthily, the forward deck¬ 
house partitioned by a bulkhead into halves — the world 
of cofflnlike bunks. The only one that seemed empty of 
human belongings was the lower one nearest the door 
and into that he lifted his bag and stood for a moment 
undecided. For the first time in his life he experienced 
what it felt like to be a prisoner. A wild desire to cry 
out, to shout in the dim recesses of that solitary com¬ 
partment, leaped within him like a sporadic reversion to 
childhood. An impulse to flee, to beat his hands against 
the bulkheads shook him like a spasm of intense fear. 
He trembled for an instant like a leaf and his lips 
twitched. Then, as quickly as it had come, the strange 
feeling passed and he laughed bitterly at himself, a short 
tortured laugh that was like a sob. 

“ Talk about manly courage,” he muttered to him¬ 
self. “ Fm full of it! ” and he grinned piteously. 

He must get out of this. Anything was better than 
this lugubrious forecastle with its strange odor mingled 
of paint, boots and either grease or turpentine, — he 
could not tell which. He turned to the door that had 
slammed behind him, then abruptly he paused. No, he 
could not go like this. Even his threadbare clothes 
were grotesquely anomalous when he recalled the melee 
of sailors in overalls, or gray undershirts, whom he had 
tried not to see as he ran the length of the deck with 


INTO THE UNKNOWN 


13 


his portmanteau. Luckily he had brought two blue shirts 
and a pair of overalls. Feverishly, he threw off his 
coat, began to undo the straps of his portmanteau and 
with the other hand to unbutton the striped madras shirt 
he was wearing. He was just climbing into those un¬ 
soiled overalls when he heard a shout outside. 

“Here you, Whitford! Crawl out here and lend a 
hand! It was Brandon’s voice. He was stunned for 
an instant by the suddenness of the call. But immedi¬ 
ately a wave of exultation leaped up in his blood. His' 
heart was aflood with gratitude. He was called! Still 
buckling his shoulder straps he dashed out, bumping his 
shins against the high coaming, but oblivious of pain, 
and for a second he blinked like a mole in the dazzling 
light of sun, sea and sky. 

“ When I call you,” rasped Brandon, eyeing him 
sharply, “ you answer! ” 

“ Yes, sir,” muttered Roderic shamefacedly. 

“ Coil up those hawsers,” growled Brandon, “ and 
you, Carmichael,” he turned to a lank, grizzled, weather- 
bronzed sailor of perhaps fifty-five, “ I want you aft.” 

Carmichael, who had already begun coiling up those 
fat ropes, dropped his work with a sharp “ Aye, aye, sir,” 
and followed the mate without so much as a glance at 
Roderic. The mate was no less instantly oblivious of 
him. And by that careless disregard, had they but known 
it, those seamen soothed and humored the lad as though 
they had conferred upon him the freedom of a city. For 
some time he dated his admission to man’s estate by that 
seemingly trivial and insignificant episode. 

Some of the sails were already set and a southerly 
breeze coming up was beginning to fill and belly them 
with the magic force that to a landsman seems at first 
supernatural, the breath of God. The tugboat, that 
must have cast off just before he came on deck, was 


14 


THE ESCAPE 


waddling back noisily with what seemed to Roderic pre¬ 
cisely the air of the duck had she espied the quondam 
ugly duckling in the shape of a swan. Men were in the 
rigging, on the shrouds; reefing, hauling and bracing, 
obeying hoarse orders and giving hoarse replies. Some 
were slewing tackle, reeving sail gear, making ready as 
for a holiday or a great enterprise. The orders, mostly 
unintelligible, that rang out over his head, seemed to 
flood him with soul-distending intoxication. The com¬ 
mand to “ loose and set foresail and main jib,” the words 
to “ hoist away on throat and peak halyards,” though in¬ 
comprehensible, stirred him like an ancient incantation. 
No one was paying the slightest heed to him. And 
therefore the one thought that surged above his name¬ 
less emotion centered upon making the most perfect 
coils of rope his hands could fashion. 

Once clear of the roads a general easement of the ten¬ 
sion seemed to settle like an atmosphere over the ves¬ 
sel. The captain, having set the course, left the wheel 
and took a turn about the ship. On a sudden his eye 
fell upon Roderic and his purple face assumed the look 
of some odd comic mask. With an agile step he ap¬ 
proached him. 

What’s your name, my lad? ” he snapped. 

“ Whitford, sir.” 

The captain examined him for an instant without 
speaking and then the bushy mustache indicated that he 
was struggling with a grin. 

“ You know what you’re shipped for, don’t you? ” he 
inquired with a half-comic, half-challenging graciousness. 

“ No, sir,” was the answer. 

“ What! ” he cried, darkling. ‘‘ Don’t you know where 
you’re bound ? ” 

“ England, I suppose, sir,” Roderic answered faintly. 

England! ” repeated the little man in surprise. 


INTO THE UNKNOWN 


15 


“Didn’t Brandon tell you? Thought you knew.” His 
aspect was serious. “ We’re bound for Suva, lad — 
that’s where we’re bound. A long voyage and a stiff 
one. Make no mistake about that. Does it make any 
difference? ” he added as an afterthought. 

Roderic had no notion where Suva was. He was 
vaguely aware, however, that it was distant, remote, in 
the South Atlantic or the South Pacific. Both seemed 
equally far, incredibly far. But the tug of a heavy weight 
in his heart did not darken the certain light in his brain, 
— that it was too late to consider now, too late to draw 
back 1 

“ N-no, sir,” he finally gulped. “ It makes no differ¬ 
ence.” The skipper’s eyes glittered into his for an in¬ 
stant, inscrutably. There was a gleam of almost paternal 
kindliness in them, had Roderic not been too bewildered 
to read them. 

“ Anyway, that’s our destination,” the elder man mur¬ 
mured, half-absently. “ But you’ll be a sailor when you 
get there, my lad — if you look smart.” And with that 
he left him. 

Long afterwards Roderic learned how near the little 
man was at that moment to putting the ship about and 
sending him ashore. But with abrupt decision he turned 
and left the new hand alone. 

Suva! With the dead helplessness of a spent swim¬ 
mer sinking heavily, the roar of engulfing waters in his 
ears, Roderic’s consciousness sank arid struggled for an 
instant against a blackness that enclosed and overwhelmed 
it. He felt stunned and buffeted about. 

“Suva! Suva!” kept throbbing through the noise 
in his ears. He had that morning written home that it 
would be a “ good experience ” to go to England and 
return in a few weeks. But — Suva! a voyage of 


16 


THE ESCAPE 


months, perhaps years! Would he ever return? Suva! 
That was different — overwhelmingly different! 

The thought of home awakened him suddenly as a 
dull distant explosion might awake a sleeper. The sound 
and splash of rippling water against the sides of the ship 
came to his ears with a strange sense of matutinal fresh¬ 
ness and novelty. The darkness had passed. He was 
broad awake, right enough, riveted to the spot where the 
captain had left him, and through his brain faintly re¬ 
verberated — Suva! 

Home! By the last mail this afternoon they would 
get the letter-card he had that morning posted from 
Boston, — a missive he had meant to intercept and de¬ 
stroy had his enterprise failed. It had not failed. It had 
succeeded only too well. To-night they would have the 
news of his departure, his flight. They would look for 
word of him shortly, for himself in a few weeks, not too 
late to enter college, for which he was ready. But here 
he was sailing for Suva — at the antipodes for all he 
knew — to return God knew when, if at all! The tricki¬ 
ness of life, the sardonic deceit of it, on a sudden came 
home to him for the first time; hit him squarely between 
the eyes. Everything in the past had been manageable, 
susceptible of plan and arrangement beforehand, for 
long periods ahead. Yet everything in the past had 
been of negligible importance compared to this. This 
was new, a thing of a savage, gripping, flinging whim¬ 
sicality; and this was life! Willful, grotesque, unaccount¬ 
able — life! 

They would have the news at home to-night! They 
would not believe and yet they must believe! He would 
not return — and they would suffer. He had not meant 
quite that. 

Whitford!’’ crashed through his reverie like the 
sound of splintering wood in the voice of the mate. “ Lay 


INTO THE UNKNOWN 17 

aft with the helmsman and learn to steer a course. Wake 
up there! Look alive! ” 

“Yes — aye, aye, sir!” he blurted out, bracing him¬ 
self against the sudden onslaught, and, crimson with 
confusion, he leaped to obey the order. “Wake up!” 
the mate had said. If he only knew the truth, the vast, 
overwhelming, unprecedented truth — his life going 
topsy-turvy so strangely, so suddenly! Nevertheless the 
mate mustn’t catch him that way — mooning again. He 
had understood Brandon’s order; that was something. 
He was grateful like a pilgrim for an alms in an alien, 
hostile land. 

The grizzled sailor, Carmichael, his brown, rough 
hands fingering the spokes of the wheel lightly, but with 
the steellike vigor of a virtuoso’s touch, glanced non¬ 
chalantly at him as he approached, and without speak- 
ing again riveted his eyes to the binnacle. Brandon 
kept pacing back and forth on the poop deck, his visored 
cap well over his eyes, looking now at the sea with an 
intense speculation, meaningful, mysterious. And Rod- 
eric, immensely anxious to penetrate and comprehend 
this mystery into which his own impetuous volition had 
so suddenly cast him, scrutinized no less intensely the 
symbols on the compass dial and followed the move¬ 
ments of the needle with a tumultuous beating of the 
heart, eager, fascinated, painfully alert, as though he 
were watching the finger of Fate. 


CHAPTER III 


MYRTLE THORNLEY 

The black bat night, as a poet called it, is no black bat 
at sea. At sea the night is a state of being, an astral 
world, literally: a thing of immensities and wheeling con¬ 
stellations, instinct with life, raining influence upon 
every nerve, at once shrinking the sensitive conciousness 
to a pin’s point and expanding it to universal dimen¬ 
sions. In the watch from eight to twelve, during which 
the mate had venturesomely posted him for lookout duty, 
Roderic had time to shake off some of the tumult and 
excitement of his momentous day. The loss of the sight 
of land was alone sufficient to leave him face to face 
with himself, to bring him the semblance of a realiza¬ 
tion of what he had that day brought about. 

Was he actually here, or was this a dream? Had he 
actually been swept all in a moment from the bustle and 
clangor of the twentieth century, with its steam and its 
motor cars and hurry, into this alien world of a too 
real romance? 

The wash of the sea against clipperlike bows settled 
like a soothing monotony upon his ears. His disturbed 
young spirit that had darted about flung and buffeted this 
way and that, like a bird in a gale, settled slowly, uncer¬ 
tainly, under the spell of the night, to a simulacrum of 
its old-time calm, though achingly aware that all the 
old time had been irrevocably swept away. 

‘^Who is Roderic Whitford? — who am I?” was the 


MYRTLE THORNLEY 


19 


thought that the immensities overhead and all about in¬ 
vited as if with prayer. The infinity of his own insignifi¬ 
cance rebounded like an elastic to the more negotiable 
query, “Why am I here?” Like a tape on a reel, his 
mind whirled back to the home he had fled, to the life he, 
in a rush of madness, had left behind, to the dimming 
world of yesterday. 

He saw them there at home, with what an exquisite 
pang of heartache; he saw their faces coming out of the 
dim emptiness to his sight — troubled, perturbed, aghast. 
They were passing his letter back and forth under the 
reading lamp in the living room, scanning again and 
again his scrawled words, so incomprehensibly clear — 
discussing, questioning — questioning why had he done 
it? The kindly, stupid, sheeplike face of his stepmother, 
with its baffled look, in the circle of light, and the white 
scholarly face of his father, rigid in a strange per¬ 
plexity; that picture stabbed him like a knife thrust. 

Why had he done it? Was it the aloofness of his 
father, a man of a strange, almost strained piety, ab¬ 
sorbed in theology on the one hand and, upon the other, 
in the narrow routine of a small Episcopal parish? No, 
it could hardly be that. Had not he, Roderic, had all 
the liberty he desired? There was school, there were 
companions, boating, tennis. There had been an empti¬ 
ness about it all, to be sure, a void which books alone 
came near to filling, but had not quite fulfilled. His 
growing, maturing body was constantly demanding 
something else — action, adventure, life; he could hardly 
tell what — but something the settled routine of his 
Adams Rock existence had failed to give him. 

They “ babied ” him; that was it. He was a man, he 
told himself with bitter stubbornness. He was a man — 
practically — and they babied him. His stepmother, poor 
simple-minded soul! In marrying the widowed clergy- 


20 


THE ESCAPE 


man with an eight-year-old son she saw her duty so 
plain that she insisted upon keeping the son at the age 
of eight for all the rest of his life. 

That was it! No, it was not because they insisted upon 
his going to Trinity when he had desired Harvard. 
That — what would that have mattered ? It was the 
other thing. They can’t seem to stand a fellow’s grow¬ 
ing up; “can’t seem to get it,” he told himself in 
anguished justification, with a gulp in his throat. And 
by “ they ” he meant that world of elders who control 
and rule, who hold young lives in their hands, who chafe 
young mouths and ride them on the curb, — unless their 
fortune and wisdom are great enough to govern without 
seeming to govern. 

The feeling of guilt toward one’s elders, however, is 
not one that youth encourages for long. Deep in his 
heart, in the hidden chamber, Roderic was aware of 
another, a wholly different reason for his evasion. Under 
the glittering velvety night that covered everything 
except his inmost thoughts, he opened stoically the secret 
door of his being and beheld the face of a girl. 

Myrtle Thornley! He saw her now as through a haze 
mingled of hostility, vivacity and grudging attraction. 
Her copper-tinted hair, her frankly luring eyes, her fleer¬ 
ing lips troubled him still, though he was now defying 
her. With a poignant aching sense of regret he ad¬ 
mitted to himself that she was measurably responsible 
for the sudden subversion of his life. She, with her three 
years’ superiority in age, with her already formed gift 
for subtle play upon masculine emotions, had forced him, 
driven him to take this step. His unfledged emotional 
life had been like a fly in the net of her allurements. 

How often he had hung upon every word and whisper 
of those mobile, faintly ridiculing lips! And those lips 
had dared him to some decisive, manly act. In a rush 


MYRTLE THORNLEY 


21 


of blinded pride he had accepted the challenge. Now, 
like the cavalier who descended into a lion’s den to 
retrieve a lady’s glove, he was shaken by a violent desire 
to stand again before her with a cool disdain, once his 
adventure was accomplished, ignoring her forevermore. 

Yes — but could he ignore her? Even now, as he 
scanned mechanically the empty living darkness, a light 
tremor shook him. Once his thoughts began to run upon 
Myrtle, his identity was fixed by the ageless instinct of 
male assertiveness. No need now to ask himself who was 
Roderic Whitford. There was no questioning now; there 
was only the picture of her framed in brightness against 
the encompassing night. Fragments of conversation 
came floating to him ghostlike as he scanned the dark 
horizon. With a singular warmth and reality the very 
pitch and timbre of her voice emerged living and 
strangely actual from the boom of the breeze against 
sailcloth, the creaking of spars and ropes under tension. 

“ Love, Roderic ? But what in the world do you know 
about love?” was a maddening query of Myrtle’s that 
now as often before came hauntingly, mockingly, with 
a light infuriating raillery, upon his ear. 

“ Why shouldn’t I know as much about it as you do? 
he heard in his own voice, muffled and tremulous with 
an undefined shame, with a secret obsession of inferiority. 

“ Because I am heaps and heaps older than you.” He 
both saw and heard the tantalizing lips utter composedly. 
“ More than three years older. I am a woman, Roddy, 
and you are only a boy — don’t you see, my dear ? ” 

The very tone, always slightly mocking and cruelly un¬ 
feeling for the throbbing constriction in his throat, came 
back to him now as clear,•clearer than in that dusk in 
his father’s garden, whither the girl had come upon the 
pretext of an errand to his stepmother. He knew now, 
as he had felt then, that the errand was a sham. She 


22 


THE ESCAPE 


had come to find him, to tantalize him, playing with him 
as had happened often before, because he had compelled 
himself to avoid her even though he was hungering for 
her. 

He saw the picture — with what aching vividness he 
saw it now — the garden under the dying light of the 
sunset, the perfectly clipped hedge of box, the beds of 
phlox and larkspur and dahlia, of gladiolus and peony, 
and a dozen or so of tenderly groomed rosebushes that 
his father’s hand, descended from Kentish yeomen, 
seemed able to care for even while his mind was pre¬ 
occupied with lengthy sermons upon the passing of Faith. 

In the brooding summer twilight he saw the framed 
picture of that unexceptional little garden with the great 
mulberry tree at the farther side dripping deep shadows 
from its friendly foliage and Myrtle Thornley, with con¬ 
scious coquetry, leaning against its darkened trunk and 
telling him that he was not a man. 

“ I am — I am a man! ” he had retorted fiercely with 
the pain of a profoundly convincing emotion and a vague 
harrowing doubt in the depths of his soul. “ Nobody 
could love you more than I love you,” he had blurted 
on, “ I don’t care how old he may be! ” 

Myrtle had laughed lightly; laughed and looked away 
half-pensively, half-sneeringly, to the faint redness where 
the sun had been. Her parted lips showed a gleam of 
white teeth, an expression derisive yet encouraging. 

“ You’re a dear sweet boy,” with a fleeting tap of her 
fingers on his cheek, and I like you very much. 
But-” 

“ What can I do to prove-” he had begun 

hoarsely, “to prove that I am-” he had broken off 

then, grinding his heel into the gravel. An unconquer¬ 
able shame had prevented him from uttering the words 





MYRTLE THORNLEY 


23 


a man.” That was too burningly humiliating. His 
face flamed hot against the cool dusk. 

“ You see, you haven’t lived yet, Roderic.” She had 
continued with the provocative sweetness of the born 
coquette. “You haven’t been anywhere; you haven’t 
done anything. Girls don’t marry or even engage them¬ 
selves to schoolboys. You must see that — don’t you? ” 
There was a wounding reason in all she had said, but it 
was her way, her manner- 

“Been anywhere?-Done anything?-'Is that 

it? 

“ I’ll — I’ll go away — go abroad, to sea — anywhere! 
I’ll do things — and big things, too,” he had stammered 
out, choking with rage — “then you’ll see^!” 

Her burst of laughter had rankled like darts. He 
could have seized her shoulders and shaken the last ves¬ 
tige of laughter out of her. 

“ What nonsense! ” she had answered with a sudden 
deceptive seriousness. “ We’re in the twentieth century, 
my dear. This is not a story book. You wouldn’t dare. 
Besides, who would tell you,” she had added sweetly, 
“ when to put on your rubbers? ” 

His hands shot upward in a frenzy of anger. If only 
she had been a man, it had flashed paradoxically through 
his simmering passion, he should have felled her then 
and there. He had spun round suddenly, his hands 
dropped to his sides and he walked swiftly off toward the 
house. 

“ You’re not very polite, Roddy,” she had called after 
him cheerfully, “to leave me like this.” 

Abruptly he had stopped, turned back and approached 
her again. 

“ That’s better,” came a low murmur as though the 
mulberry tree had grown on a sudden vocal. “ That’s 
more like-” but he had not allowed her to finish. He 






24 


THE ESCAPE 


had gripped her suddenly with his hot, trembling hands, 
kissed her fiercely upon the lips, and with a muttered, 
“ This is the last time you’ll see me,” he leaped over the 
cherished flower beds, cleared the clipped hedge at a 
bound and disappeared into the soft August dusk. 

And that was little more than twenty-four hours gone 
by. And Adams Rock, north of Boston, had all at once 
become so intolerably irksome and impossible that now 
he was irrevocably standing out to sea on a voyage almost 
as long as Magellan’s, as long as Captain Cook’s. No, 
no. It could not be! It was a dream from which he 
must surely awake. 

“ Light ahead of us! ” He woke up suddenly to hear 
his voice cry out hoarsely, mechanically, as though a 
stranger were speaking through his throat. The ma¬ 
chinery of his new environment had already sufficiently 
enmeshed him, was already using him as an integral part 
of itself, of its age-long irresistible empire. 

“ I was wondering when you’d see that light,” the 
voice of Brandon crackled almost in his ear, and he felt 
his face growing hot. “ Thought you were asleep or 
frozen. Better draw a pea-jacket from the lazaret if 
your brain freezes up.” And as he stood confused and 
ashamed, he heard Brandon shout behind him. 

“ Swing her in about two points, Carmichael, till you 
pass that mud scow.” 

“Two points in, sir,” came the rasping answer from 
the steersman and presently his eyes fixed upon the ap¬ 
proaching “ mud scow.” Roderic, still tremulous with 
excitement at being caught woolgathering, descried a fan¬ 
tastically beautiful steamer ablaze with lights, radiant 
with power, warm, alive, heading toward the land — a 
ship perhaps four times the size of his own — a world 
by comparison, filling the sea with her sense of security. 
His heart leaped out to her like a wild thing caged, as 


MYRTLE THORNLEY 


25 


she passed on the port side of the schooner. He would 
have given all he possessed and the world besides to be 
aboard her at that moment. But — she passed — and, 
drawing away, left the darkness on the face of the waters 
the more intense as he stood alone between the flukes of 
the anchors, facing the immense solitude over that most 
daring, most mysterious of all human contrivances, — 
the cutwater of a ship cleaving the sea. 

He turned furtively to glance once again at the disap¬ 
pearing lights of the steamer. The faint plume of smoke, 
ghostly, phantomlike, that drifted lazily to leeward, ob¬ 
scuring some of the stars, seemed to give a final tug to 
his heart strings. Quickly he faced about once again 
toward the unknown. 

His tension easing gradually in the enveloping dark¬ 
ness, his mind once more swayed like a reed in a breeze, 
wavering now, now inclining sadly under the force, to¬ 
ward the picture of home, the square of the garden, the 
beds of bright flowers so securely enclosed by the hedge, 
sheltered by the maples and the overhanging mulberry, 
pervaded by the irresistible aroma of phlox and honey¬ 
suckle. How piercingly acute was that aroma now, how 
vivid the garden! All his past, his life, lay there en¬ 
closed by that hedge in those fragrant beds. Nevermore, 
perhaps, would he see it, but he knew with certainty that 
he could never forget it, not the faintest detail of it. 

A bell suddenly clanged behind him and made him 
jump sharply. Eight bells! Men began to emerge from 
the forecastle and his relief came drowsily shouldering 
forward. 

“ Your watch below,” muttered the man, scanning the 
dark horizon. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE GALBRAITHS 

Once you commit the irrevocable, you open the way 
to the impossible. The rough but on the whole friendly 
world of the forecastle had shaken down to its seagoing 
life and, willy-nilly, Roderic was shaking down with it. 
There were bickerings and mutterings, rude jests and 
petty acts, a sense of work to be done, grudgingly at 
times, at times with a forced alacrity, very much as on 
land, except that this world was small. The very breadth 
of the horizon seemed to narrow all human existence to 
the handful of less than twenty men working the eight- 
hundred-ton schooner, the Alice. This tiny world, whose 
actuality would have appeared to him impossible a few 
days earlier, became within a week the only world of 
reality. 

On and on, day by day, the ship went driving south¬ 
ward, with stretches of brilliant weather and occasional 
rain squalls, with definite duties that filled the days and 
broke the nights, that made rest hours precious gifts, 
that turned a few minutes of thought or dreaming into a 
priceless boon. 

True to his word, Brandon the mate was making a 
sailor of Roderic, until every muscle in him ached with 
fatigue. The white bunk in the forecastle, despite 
draughts and smells and noises, became a glittering haven 
of refuge, a reward and a prize dearly earned. And if 
the men joked him about deadeyes and darning needles, 
or if Billy Stiles, the lad from Bangor, nearer than the 


THE GALBRAITHS 


27 


others to his own age, demanded whether he could as 
yet differentiate the main truck from a wheelbarrow, 
Roderic grinned with weary good humor and was 
asleep before he could think of an answer. He was 
awakened seemingly before he had gone to sleep. Al¬ 
ways his dreams seemed to abound in sound and fury, 
that had no other origin than the rapping of handspikes 
or belaying pins and the shouts of command to wake up 
in there and bundle out upon deck. 

A nautical apprenticeship is, after all, like any other. 
You learn much in the first full days, imagine you have 
acquired more wisdom than your elders in virtue of your 
peculiar brilliance or genius, and then, in shame, humili¬ 
ation and self-searching, you really begin to learn. Rod¬ 
eric Whitford was no exception, save that with his New 
England canniness he endeavored not to parade his ac¬ 
quisitions until a riper experience corrected his blunders. 
In that way he was spared much ignominy. He was no 

smart Aleck ” for all his “ eddication,” the crew agreed, 
and that was something. 

It was something to the crew and something to the 
skipper as well. That shrewd little mariner, who other¬ 
wise would not have deigned to waste time on a fore¬ 
castle hand, often watched and scrutinized this decent 
silent lad whose story he read in a measure, though taking 
precious good care not to show it. He was not there 
to resolve doubts or to restore runaway boys, but to man 
and sail his ship on her course. In his heart, however, 
was a curious sense of warmth for the boy whose mind 
was not so sealed to him as that youth imagined. 

The rest of the men were a handful of seamen ordinaryi 
enough, who for one reason or another were working 
Pacificward, — old hands who had grown up in wind¬ 
jammers, who had tried steamers and could not bear the 
hell of the stokehold, or the grime and dirt of the coal 


28 


THE ESCAPE 


bins: men from Australia, England, Sweden, Finland, 
who had been touched by the influence of the East; an 
Englishman from Portsmouth, another from Liverpool; 
a Nova Scotian and Billy of Bangor, whom an adven¬ 
turous spirit drove as far away as he could find a ship 
to take him. Packet rats is a term extinct and obsolete, 
gone with the clipper era. It is a hard name for men 
who could face so much of toil and hardship and solitude, 
but so a hard man might have called some of them with¬ 
out serious misnomer. 

Once in the Pacific they would scatter among the 
warm continents and islands, among ships and seaports 
where they could feel superior in their whiteness to the 
ubiquitous Kanaka. Some were possessed of homes 
there, or, at all events, of sweethearts. Some, like the 
Finns and the Swedes, those perpetual wanderers of the 
seas, would ultimately work their way homeward again, 
for the sight of snow and frozen landscape. With each 
of them, whatever his aim, or his obscure promptings, 
the quest of bread upon the waters was an essential, a 
dominating element. 

With Roderic alone in that company the economic ob¬ 
ject of bread had played no decisive part. This the mas¬ 
ter of the Alice had apprehended from the moment he 
had first seen him. But even the seemingly dull-witted 
sailors were early suspicious of the truth. More than 
once he had overheard the phrase ‘‘ a gentleman’s son in 
disguise ” as he passed a group smoking on a hatchway 
or at work on the main deck. As that expression is a 
piece of sardonic sarcasm when used of a sailor, a fact 
obvious from the look that went with it, Roderic shunned 
his mates at first with a nervously sensitive shrinking 
until he could prove himself worthy of his bread and 
salt meat. 

It was with surprise, therefore, he learned what the 


THE GALBRAITHS 


29 


others had doubtless known and discussed from the first, 
— that the ship had passengers on board. He saw Cap¬ 
tain Flitch pacing the deck with a gaunt bushy-browed 
white-clad old man, walking sternly erect and turning in 
his talk now at the rigging, now seaward, a face wrinkled 
and brown, the color of pump leather. 

The owner of the Alice flashed through Roderic’s 
mind, as he continued his humble task of polishing a 
capstan brass. But Billy of Bangor, who passed at that 
moment with a tarpot in his blackened hands and the 
visor of his cap over his neck, muttered from the corner 
of his mouth: 

“ Old Galbraith.’^ 

“ Old Galbraith,” he repeated to himself mentally. 
Owner or passenger, what difference could that make to 
him ? About as much as a prima donna in the cabin could 
make to the coal-passer in the stokehold of a liner. Only 
too well had he been made aware by this time that he was 
the humblest and least significant of all human creatures 
on board. 

Presently, however, when the captain left his pas¬ 
senger and disappeared into the chartroom aft, old Gal¬ 
braith paused suddenly in his moody pacings alone and 
abruptly demanded of Roderic: 

“ You a Yankee ? ” 

“ Yes, sir,” Roderic answered, and he could not have 
told what demon of forwardness or past repression made 
him add to this unofficial person, and proud of it.” 

Damn your pride,” muttered the old man mechanic¬ 
ally, stern-featured but without rancor. “ I didn’t think 
there was a Yankee sailor left in a seagoing vessel.” 
Dominating, with a kind of wire-taut tremulous 
authority, the man stood over him with a look half of 
resentment, half of curiosity. Instantly anxious to mol¬ 
lify an old man, Roderic answered: 


30 


THE ESCAPE 


“ I am not much of a sailor, sir, if it comes to that.” 

No,” retorted the other sharply. “ But Fd make a 
sailor of you if this were my ship, I can tell you. Your 
first voyage, I take it.” 

Yes, sir.” 

“Aye,” muttered the stranger bitterly as if to him¬ 
self. And with a biting scorn added: 

“ Ye’ll find the work too hard for certain, and the 

pace too slow and the dirty steamers will get ye. - 

Sailors!” he sniffed with a Parthian venom and a toss 
of his white old head at the ship in general, and strode 
off forward as abruptly as he had come. 

Why old men should grow embittered and peppery to 
the point of grotesqueness like this one, or else dull and 
silent to the point of aloofness, like his father, was an 
insoluble mystery to Roderic. Why could not this one, 
for instance, who seemingly might have imparted so 
much of useful information, have been sweet and gentle, 
as youth generally pictures old men ? But then again, as 
he stooped over his work, Roderic reminded himself that 
he was only the lowliest rated hand on board. Why 
should the old man, the friend of the captain, waste time 
upon such as he, when even the fat garrulous cook in the 
galley scarcely spoke to him as yet? 

He gathered up his waste, his flannel rags and the 
polishing materials, rose up, stretching his legs and 
shoulders from their cramped positions and walked aft 
toward the cabin, the scene of the next installment in 
his menial labors, precisely as four bells rang out, the 
hour of ten in the morning, before which he was not 
to enter those hallowed abodes. But this was destined 
to be his day of surprises. 

For facing him at the top of the companionway, with 
the dazzling morning light upon her and the obscurity 
of the cabin as background, stood a girl, tall, pale, with 



THE GALBRAITHS 


31 


a shimmer of golden-brown hair showing under a white 
leghorn hat, broad-brimmed against the sun. In his 
momentary impression of her, all the color of her face 
seemed to be concentrated in her lips, though these were 
not excessively red. But their beautiful yet generous 
modeling possessed the arresting quality of radiant greet¬ 
ing. Under one arm she pressed a dark green rug and a 
silken cushion. In her right she held a book. Her 
chiseled features gave a suggestion of fragility. A tinge 
of color now touched the white skin over her somewhat 
high cheek bones and she smiled faintly. 

“ Isn’t my father here somewhere ? ” she inquired in 
a low contralto voice, that one felt should have proceeded 
from a more robust woman. 

Roderic stood a moment speechless, suspended as it 
were in a great, a sudden silence, that had the quality of 
exaggerating every sound, the voice of the wind, the 
creaking of guy ropes and yardarms, the perpetual splash¬ 
ing of waves against the sides of the ship. 

“ Mr. Galbraith,” she added, as though, explaining to a 
child or a simpleton. 

“ Your father is forward — on the forepeak,” rang 
out the sharp strident voice of Brandon, coming up 
briskly at that moment. “ You’ll find him sitting on an 
anchor. Miss Galbraith,” he went on with a laugh. 
” May I take you to him? ” 

“ Oh, no, thank you,” she answered composedly. 

That would be too windy for me. I’ll sit here against 
the wall,” and she moved to the right of the door and 
dropped her rug and cushion upon the deck. 

“ I’ll get you a chair,” cried Brandon with officious 
courtesy. Whitford, come with me,” he added sharply, 
and this command, no different from others of Bran¬ 
don’s, suddenly stung Roderic like the lash of a whip. 
Without replying, he turned quickly away from the ap- 


32 


THE ESCAPE 


parition of the girl and followed the mate abaft the 
cabin to the break in the poop. 

Southward and ever southward drove the ship like a 
gigantic winged thing under favoring winds, with yards 
squared to one of those rarely fortunate slants that 
helped to make the famous records of clippers. 

Toward the tropic and across it, and toward the line 
she Sped; skirting the West Indies on the East, a terriffic 
v/hite bird, her wings stretched to their utmost, the half- 
hourly clang of the bells alone sounding forth the intima¬ 
tion that it was human skill that drove her. A plop of 
rain would darken her sails, reduce their area for a time 
and make her body glisten wet for a space, but shortly 
the tropic sun and breeze would turn her dry and white 
again with a barb of flaky foam at her bows, an ex¬ 
panding furrow of rippling water in her wake, the while 
the taffrail log kept spinning out the generous sea miles. 

“ Two-eighty from noon to noon,” Roderic would hear 
the skipper chuckle to old Galbraith exultantly. “ Not 
bad, eh?” 

“ Better than dirty tramps can do,” would respond Gal¬ 
braith with an acid exhilaration. 

Watch followed watch, day followed night, an occa¬ 
sional bit of reefing and hauling, a round of petty duties 
against a spread of vast emptiness, of unending monot¬ 
ony, that might have served the poet or thinker for specu¬ 
lations, beautiful or profound, gave that small world of 
seamen in which Roderic now lived no more than they 
seemed to demand of life, — food, time for sleep, for 
mending and washing grimy clothing, for endless chat¬ 
tering — ribald, foolish, childish, petulant — for smok¬ 
ing vile tobacco. 

Roderic alone, perhaps, of all the crew, found his 
thought turning inward after the first turmoil of at- 


THE GALBRAITHS 33 

tentive bewilderment had subsided into a little ordered 
knowledge. With the spokes of the wheel in his fingers 
on fair days, that potent circle seemingly in the center 
of his body as his shoulders topped it, something like a 
fantasy would come to him, floating cloudlike, that the 
wheel gripped in his hands was his own life. That he 
ruled and guided it with an unerring sureness now as 
never before, because now for the first time it had been 
delivered to him with a solemn injunction to falter not 
nor deviate. Against the breadth of the sea, under the 
brilliant slanting sun that made segments of rainbows 
in the dashes of spray over the weather bow, he seemed 
to himself to be towering over circumstances at last, as 
he towered over the binnacle, a match for all things be¬ 
cause the very spokes of life had been put into his hands. 
The breeze droned on in the rigging, a pennon of blue 
smoke rolled to leeward from the galley, and on the 
main deck seamen were busy with ropes, sails, clothes, or 
palm and needle, sitting on a tarpaulined main hatch, or 
on the spare spars trimly lashed along the waterways, 
emitting little tenuous clouds of pipe sm.oke — magical 
moments these! Yet — on a sudden everything would 
seem wrong. 

If he was truly endowed with this incontestable mas¬ 
tery over circumstances, why was he, Roderic Whit- 
ford, here on a windjammer bound for the antipodes? 
How had he come here ? He belonged, not here, but — 
and again he was immersed in dreams. A stifling fra¬ 
grance would suddenly come to him, the perfume of 
phlox mingled with a heavy scent of honeysuckle, the 
garden in which he had grown up, the overhanging, drip¬ 
ping mulberry tree, acluster with all his memories, the 
receding symbol of his exile. And then the girl Myrtle 
Thornley! That was why he was here. How insen¬ 
sate, how poignantly stupid I But now — now he knew. 


34 


THE ESCAPE 


Never could she do that again; not she, nor any one! He, 
it was, held the spokes now; he was in charge of the 
wheel. And after all, was it in reality the Thornley girl ? 
Was it not something bigger and mightier, the irresistible 
urge for action, adventure, life? His chest would swell, 
his fingers grip the spokes more rigidly. No — no one 
but his own will could ever again drive him about. 

From the cabin would emerge the two passengers, old 
Galbraith and his daughter. Her slender figure, as she 
clung to her father’s arm, the blowing tendrils of her 
hair under the leghorn or the heather-blue tam-o’-shanter, 
a picture of beauty and strangely appealing fragility, 
would suddenly wipe out the images and symbols of home. 
Her laughter and quiet chatter as she looked up at her 
father in their walk seemed ineffably charming in those 
alien surroundings, holding the eye and ear, causing one’s 
pulses to beat faster. Yet a wave of resentment would 
immediately submerge the throb of kindly feeling and 
admiration. Snobs! Of course they were snobs, he 
would mentally cry out with resentment. At home he 
was as good as anybody. But here, by an absurdly rigid 
convention that placed infinite barriers between officers, 
passengers and hands before the mast, he was like some 
pariah whose very existence must be ignored by those 
beings of the super-world. Stewarding for them! He, 
Roderic Whitford, because there was no steward in the 
crew, must wait upon the divinities at table to assist the 
cook and be ignored like a negro waiter! Anger shook 
him, the wheel quivered in his hands and a shower of 
spray flew up iridescent with rainbow colors. 

Think you can steer a ship now, eh?” The voice 
of Captain Flitch, in the soft growl he affected, came 
upon his ear suddenly on one such afternoon like a mur¬ 
mur from the breeze. Roderic, like a dreamer awak- 


THE GALBRAITHS 35 

ened abruptly, turned guiltily, losing a spoke to his 
mortification. 

Trying to, sir,” was all he could find wit enough to 
reply, hastily correcting his error. 

“ You haven’t seen weather yet, my lad,” the skip¬ 
per scrutinized the compass severely, lest the crew should 
think him gossiping with a sailor. “ Wait,” he said, 
turning to Roderic sharply, as though uttering a repri¬ 
mand, wait till we strike a gale.” 

Roderic, uncertain, alert, painfully anxious to com¬ 
prehend, gazed for a moment into those shrewdly 
twinkling eyes. No! There was no reprimand in those 
eyes. It was a piece of kindly condescension on the part 
of the master to this strayed puppy in his fold. On a 
sudden the boy was overflowing with gratitude, a maga¬ 
zine of questions that the captain could resolve for him, 
if only he could stay long enough on this sudden level 
of human equality, at least of human relationship, to 
which the little skipper had raised him. 

“ I wish I knew about navigation,” he blurted out 
eagerly, before he could marshal any other words, almost 
before he could think. It was the resentment at his own 
futility that had unconsciously burst forth into expres¬ 
sion, the desire to transcend in a bound so many grades 
of inferiority that confined him in this strange world 
into which mysterious forces had catapulted him. In the 
same instant he flushed to his ears, abruptly aware of his 
presumption. 

“ Navigation,” the captain repeated, moodily looking 
away toward the forepeak. “ Ye-es, there are books in 
the cabin. You are smart, you Yankees. Men have 
been mates — commanded ships at your age — not 
enough experience, though,” he trailed off into his soft 
murmuring growl, for at that moment Galbraith and 
his daughter were coming toward them, and with his 


36 


THE ESCAPE 


pudgy thumb and a broad grin, the little mariner, like 
a figure in a humorous sea story, beckoned them to come 
up on the poop. 

“ Books in the cabin,’^ he repeated, muttering over his 
shoulder as the father and daughter began to ascend the 
ladder, “ but learn to steer a vessel first, and to lay 
out on a yard,” he added with a laugh, precisely at the 
instant when Miss Galbraith’s head appeared above the 
ladder. Roderic could have bitten his tongue out for 
having spoken at all, despite the kindness that had gone 
before, only to receive this final sting of humiliation 
within earshot of the girl. He glued his eyes to the bin¬ 
nacle without a glance at the others as they came up and 
moved to leeward of him with Flitch. 

“ This will be great weather on your island,” he heard 
the captain remark jocundly. “ Picnic weather for the 
land crabs.” 

“ Always great weather there,” Galbraith answered 
testily. “ When d’ye think ye’ll make Papeete, Captain ? ” 

“You know as much as I do about that,” the skipper 
laughed as at a witticism, out of sheer exhuberance of 
spirit. “ Wait till we’ve passed fifty south in the Pacific, 
then I might try to guess for you. But what d’you 
want? ” he ran on with boisterous jocularity. “ Look at 
Miss Allene’s cheeks — getting color in ’em, eh? Color 
in ’em. Look! ” and again he used that thumb of his 
with irresistibly comic effect to point out the color in 
the girl’s cheeks. “ Tropic island flowers don’t thrive 
in gray walls. Need the warm breezes, eh? ” 

It was then that Roderic could not forbear looking up 
and his glance encountered the shy violet-gray eyes of 
the girl like two still deep pools of light irradiated by a 
faint smile. Instantly his own eyes fastened again upon 
the compass. The little thrill that shot through him he 
stifled in a bitter resentment. 


THE GALBRAITHS 


3T 


“ God! ” he thought, as he wielded the spokes with 
angry energy. “ I’ll be glad when those fools get off at 
Papeete — why don’t we get to Papeete and be rid o£ 
that outfit — damn them! ” 


CHAPTER V 


RANZO 

The novelty of sailing on a windjammer may fade to 
a passenger in the long days that follow one another in 
seemingly unending monotony. But to an embryo sailor 
like Roderic Whitford there was the constant excitement 
of learning, as thrilling as the young child’s passage from 
creeping to walking. He was alert and eager, and by 
the time the line was crossed and the ship was running 
down the southeast Trades off the coast of South Amer¬ 
ica, with the Southern Cross gleaming nightly nearer, 
there was little difference between him and the rest of the 
crew in matters of duty. 

“ Reefing and pawling is nothin’,” old Carmichael once 
philosophically observed. “ Any fool can learn that in a 
week. A man’s a sailor or he ain’t a sailor by the guts 
that’s in his gizzard — and that’s all.” By which he 
intended to convey that Roderic’s address to his task was 
a certain indication of orthodox contents in his interior. 

There was no romance about the voyage to Carmichael 
or the crew in general. Their livelihood had put them 
on the Alice as it might have brought them to any one 
of score of ships. Captain Flitch was bent primarily 
upon taking his eight-hundred-ton topsail schooner, the 
purchase of which represented the crowning of a life¬ 
time, from the States to his home waters and his own 
designs in the South Pacific. The chance meeting of old 
Galbraith and his daughter, upon their arrival in Boston 


RANZO 


39 


from Glasgow, with the exuberant Captain Flitch, was 
alone responsible for the presence of the two passengers 
on the Alice. 

Gossip in the forecastle, to which a village grocer’s 
shop is a tower of silence, spun fantastic yarns concern¬ 
ing the Galbraiths. Olsen, a Swede, * declared he had it 
from the second mate that Galbraith was a king on a 
cannibal island. Ribald retorts informed him what the 
second mate would do before choosing him as a recep¬ 
tacle of information. Davidson, the Nova Scotian car¬ 
penter, for some reason known as the Beaver, endlessly 
playing solitaire on his sea-chest when off duty, broke 
his silence long enough one day to inform them that if 
they craved to know the truth about the Galbraiths, they 
had better ask him. A shower of queries, injunctions 
and interjections greeted this remark. 

“ Out with it, old slats! ” “ Spill it, Davey! ” Spit 
it out, old Beaver! ” We bite — let’s hear it! ” 

“ Well, he ain’t no more a king than what you be, ” 
retorted Davidson, slowly fingering his cards and spitting 
a red jet into the sandbox at his end of the forecastle. 
“ He’s nothin’ more than a copra planter.” 

** How d’you know? ” shouted Billy of Bangor. 

'' Cause the young lady, she told me when I was fixin’ 
her door latch — smart Alec. See?” 

Ole Beaver’s movin’ into bleddy ’igh sassiety, s’elp 
me,” cried Hornblow, a Liverpool ex-stoker, whose 
memories of hula dancers and moonlit beaches were driv¬ 
ing him back into the Pacific, even on a windjammer. 
His powerful bare arms were covered with a network of 
chromatic tatooing, and his beady green eyes were danc¬ 
ing. He dared not make any ribald remarks about the 
only woman on board, having early discovered that the 
more decent members of the crew would not tolerate it, — 


40 


THE ESCAPE 


a packet rat, if ever one there was. An’ w’ere is this 
’ere bleedin’ island, Beaver?” he crowed. 

“ I don’t rightly know,” replied the carpenter soberly. 
Sobriety seemed the tacitly agreed-upon style with which 
Hornblow’s speeches were met. He turned too easily 
vile. “ But ’taint far from Tahiti, I’m certain sure, for 
Papeete’s their port.” 

“ Crikey! Pinch me, some wan! ” Hornblow cried 
in an ecstasy, jumping from his bunk. Does this 
hooker put in at Papeete? Do I see them again, dancin’ 
the hula?” And a stream of ecstatic profanity shot 
out of him in sheer exultation. “Oh, hallelujah!” he 
maundered on. “ What d’you bleedin’ lubbers know of 
the beach ? ” and he trailed off into chuckling inarticu¬ 
lateness, the scar of steam on his face that ran from 
his left temple to beneath the chin turning a livid red 
and giving his face a gruesome twist. 

Roderic, who had contributed nothing to this conver¬ 
sation, received the intelligence with perhaps more in¬ 
terest than any one. So it was certain the passengers 
would debark in mid-Pacific? Well, he for one was glad 
of it. A nuisance, that was all they were, — the grim old 
man and that — that fussy girl on board. He packed a 
pipeful of plug and went out on deck to smoke by the 
foremast. The fair breeze to which the ship was heeling 
that tranquil Sunday afternoon seemed to sweep all the 
childish babble of the forecastle out of his head. What 
had he to do with all that? The world seemed suddenly 
rich with endless though distant possibility. Passengers! 
What had he to do with the passengers ? What did they 
matter to him? His life was in his own hands at last. 

Allene Galbraith and her father were just disappear¬ 
ing aft into the cabin companionway, and strangely 
enough Roderic experienced a pang of nameless regret 
that the nuisance of the ship should pass out of view 


RANZO 


41 


precisely as he had caught sight of her. Softly he swore 
at himself for his folly. Why should he care? Of what 
conceivable interest to him were either father or 
daughter? Another Myrtle Thornley? Girls were all 
alike. He knew them now, knew them for what they 
were. And he bit savagely into the stem of his pipe. 

One additional gleam of information concerning the 
Galbraiths came to him soon after that Sunday after¬ 
noon. It was at a change of watches when he came to 
relieve the wheel, that he overheard a fragment of col¬ 
loquy between Brandon and the skipper, touching their 
island home. 

“It must be very small,” the captain was saying, hold¬ 
ing to a stanchion, “smaller than Victoria Island, almost 
like those reefs that are marked upon the chart ED — 
existence doubtful. Victoria — it’s about i6i degrees 
south 8 — is still marked as Dudosa, or Doubtful Island. 
I’ve been there, I’m sorry to say — a beast of a spot. I’ll 
tell you about it some time.” 

“ But I thought these people were near Tahiti?” put 
in Brandon, with questing eyes. 

“ No — not exactly,” said the captain. “ They are 
somewhere east by north of the Paumotus. A soft thing, 
I shouldn’t wonder,” he trailed off, growling specula¬ 
tively, “ since the old boy is so careful not to state his 
position. Has a forty-ton schooner of his own there. A 
little copra, a little shell, and between the two he makes 
his living — and a bit besides, eh ? Well, that’s one way 
of living for a retired skipper; I don’t grudge it him! ” 
and he laughed jovially and descended the ladder cabin- 
wards. And for some time afterward, though the ship 
was heeling to the staysails, with a very considerable 
white bone in her mouth, as the crew put it, the mate 
Brandon in the chart room was poring over Pacific charts 


42 THE ESCAPE 

and sailing directories, with what satisfaction he alone 
knew. 

Through fair weather and gusts of foul the ship drove 
forward, and the hands that manned her were kept at 
their constant routine of avoiding idleness. There was 
holystoning and bracing, staying and easing, scraping 
and painting, rattling down rigging, with little time for 
leisure and that little precious. Roderic could now swarm 
up the shrouds with any of them, lay out on a yard, and 
pass a gasket round a sail without disgrace. He knew 
the dangerous exhilaration of swinging on a footrope 
high in the air, clinging for dear life and yet working 
with a will simultaneously. He still stumbled at times 
over the high coaming of the forecastle deckhouse, to 
the constant amusement of his mates, to whom the low 
thresholds of shore life were things almost forgotten. 
It was one such stupid accident that cost him a twisted 
ankle and the sight of Pernambuco, when the ship put 
in for water and fresh provisions before she tackled Cape 
Stiff. He had to lie up for four days. When he came 
on duty again, the very memory of land seemed like an 
ancient fable. 

On raced the Alice toward the hectic gales off the River 
Plate, to the cold winds that blew off the Pampas and 
the first icy blasts with moist snow that brought Antarctic 
intimations of the Horn. Roderic was compelled to draw 
warm, ill-fitting clothing from the lazaret against his pay, 
and the dreary rounding of the Horn began. Twenty- 
four days of evil weather, snowy decks, icy ropes and 
frozen sails, that numbed your fishhooks past the hope of 
thawing, that chilled the marrow in the bones, that made 
the thought of warmth and comfort a ridiculous, a dis¬ 
solving dream, that brought grave anxiety to every eye 
on board. Yet no more actual danger had threatened 


RANZO 


43 


the Alice than had threatened thousands of other ships 
under those angry heavens. Captain Flitch found much 
exultation in the thought, despite his exhausting days and 
nights on deck, that he had made the run from the Falk- 
lands to 50 degrees south, in seven days to the hour, 
“ clipper time, ” as he explained. Patches of clear sky 
broke through at intervals, the glitter of the Southern 
Cross fitfully rained down its majestic influence to the 
joy of straining hearts and the Magellan clouds shot 
hopeful messages to anxious eyes. Once in the Pacific 
all hands were now glad of the Galbraiths’ presence 
aboard. For the Galbraiths it was who compelled the 
ship, under topsails again, to head northwest toward the 
warm tropic and the elysian Society Islands, instead of 
almost due west, barely above the limit of drift ice, toward 
Fiji. 

“ Gripes! The hula! Hornblow, the Liverpool ex¬ 
stoker, would exclaim, sucking in his breath when snow 
was still powdering his sou’-wester. “ The brown girls, 
the vahines — the good French rum and cognac! ” 

“ She’s still a long way from all them,” some one would 
remind him. 

“ Yep, but she’s headin’ nor’west now, ye-wet 

blanket — nor’west, toward the cocoanuts, ye bleever! 
G’ on now, skate along there, old girl 1 ” he would apos¬ 
trophize the ship. “ Skate along, ye beauty, ye little-” 

and he would lose himself in a shower of vile affectionate 
epithets at the ship, that was bearing him to his heart’s 
desire. 

Fair winds and bright sunshine came to them gradually 
and became virtually constant as the ship, like a creature 
triumphant over crises and circumstances, swam out of 
the memory of the Horn, with magnificent daily runs, 
and headed toward Capricorn over the fortieth parallel. 

“ I am beginning to smell them palm trees now,” Horn- 




44 


THE ESCAPE 


blow would ecstatically hug himself, and all the ship’s 
company seemed preternaturally cheerful as though rid¬ 
ing, observed Billy of Bangor, upon a Sunday-school 
picnic. The breezes purred in the rigging, bursts of 
song were frequent about the forecastle coamings and, 
because Roderic had taken the captain at his word, bor¬ 
rowed some books on navigation from the cabin and was 
secretly conning them, his shipmates in the midst of 
roistering laughter, that made even the Finns grin, gave 
him a rousing version of Reuben Ranzo, a ditty almost 
forgotten on the face of the seas. Billy of Bangor, per¬ 
haps a trifle jealous, began the chanty that his grand¬ 
father, an old California clipper sailor, had taught him 
on a Maine farm. The burden of it was that — 

Oh, Ranzo was no sailor 
Ranzo boys, O Ranzo. . . . 

• •••••• 

But the captain, he being a good man, 

Ranzo boys, O Ranzo, 

He took him in the cabin, 

Ranzo boys, O Ranzo, 

And he gave him wine and whiskey, 

Ranzo boys, O Ranzo. 

And he learned him navigation, 

Ranzo boys, O Ranzo. 

And now he’s Captain Ranzo, 

Ranzo boys, O Ra-a-an-zo-o! 

Hornblow emitted a wild screech after every final 
Ranzo, and Roderic could now laugh at his own expense 
and join in the singing. 

No one eternally cabined in houses, or endlessly mov¬ 
ing in streets, can come within leagues of apprehending 
the nearness to heaven of those on board a vessel long 
traversing vast and sunlit seas. Sunlight and starlight, 
as they pour down ceaselessly, become mysteriously 


RANZO 


45 


dynamic, potently alive, and the Biblical fable of a man 
being bodily taken up into the empyrean dawns at mo¬ 
ments like an unexpected landfall into astounding reality. 

The thought of “ home ” still visited Roderic at in¬ 
tervals, and he knew he was certain to return to that 
home at the end of his voyage. Glimmering dimly in the 
depth of his consciousness, however, was the obscure 
knowledge that his breaking away from the home and 
the garden where he had been reared was at least an 
escape from an old self into a new one. And realization 
instinctively came to him during those vast open days 
between sea and sky that henceforth, for good or ill, 
wherever he might be, this new self was alone on the 
bosom of the universe. A thrilling novel sense of self- 
reliance was being born into his spirit. 

“ You’re a sailor now, lad,” Carmichael had told him, 
when they had rounded the Horn. “ Fve seen ’em come, 
and I’ve seen ’em go. An’ it’s Cape Stiff that tells the 
story.” But a vague hope was beating in Roderic’s 
heart that he was more than that now, — that he was a 
man. 

The glittering days that followed brought the pas¬ 
sengers much upon the deck, after their long seclusion 
round the Horn. Roderic could not help gazing at Allene 
Galbraith whenever opportunity offered and yet some¬ 
how bearing her a nameless resentment for her presence 
there. Her eyes, her hair, her mantling color, her very 
clothes were indescribably fascinating to him, yet he kept 
turning from her with a somber perplexity, like a child 
troubled as to why the forbidden should so constantly 
lure him. Senseless irritation against her smoldered 
fitfully in his heart. Was the outgrown boyishness still 
stirring in the heart of the man? Well, a few days 
more and the ship would be rid of her for good. And, 
after all, their ways lay infinitely wide apart. 


46 


THE ESCAPE 


Nevertheless, during his long silent watches on deck, 
he would find himself in the midst of imaginary conver¬ 
sations with her, pointed, bitter, dignified, and always 
these colloquies ended with something sharp and acid 
that tripped from his tongue with quiet fury, once for 
all nailing her to silence. One day his opportunity came. 
Beating against the southeast Trades, the Alice was now 
heading toward the islanded portion of the Pacific above 
the tropic, that to the Galbraiths spelled home. From 
her deck chair by the companionway, as with averted 
eyes Roderic was passing her, seemingly unconscious 
of her presence, the girl, with a petrifying suddenness, 
spoke to him. 

“ Whitford,” she called softly, and he stood for an 
instant incredulous. Then his heart bounded and began 
to throb like the head pumps. He turned his gaze upon 
her without replying; tendrils of her shining hair were 
blowing about her face; she seemed to radiate an incredible 
beauty. 

“Wouldn’t you like to have some of these books?” 
she began and hesitated, the color in her face slowly 
deepening. 

“ Books! ” he repeated in a startled bewilderment. 

“ I have so many, you see,” she sat up from the 
cushions and spoke rapidly to conceal her own confusion. 
“ I have read them all, and we’re nearly home. It will 
save my packing them again and carrying them. I 
thought, perhaps — if you would like some of them — 
or perhaps the others-” 

Then the smoldering demon of the imaginary conver¬ 
sation blazed forth in him. “ Whitford! ” it flashed 
through his brain. “Not even a mister to a stranger — 
does she imagine she’s slumming? ” 

“ No, thanks,” he answered her coldly, icily. “ I have 
no time to read fiction. I know nothing about the others.” 



RANZO 


47 


It is many years since that day and the world has lived 
an age, but I see.him still and feel the writhing of shame 
at his own irresistible boorishness; but to save his soul he 
could not at that instant, for all his new manhood, over¬ 
come that burst of stupid and cruel young egotism. 
And without looking at her again, he strode off upon his 
errand. 

A momentary flame of exultation leaped up in his 
heart. “ That ought to settle her! ” repeated itself again 
and again in silent speech within the dark corners of his 
resentment, and he stumbled twice over trivial obstacles. 
Once back at the forepeak whence he had come, a sudden 
dragging misery swept through him like a swirl of bilge 
water. Why had he done it? How could he? She 
had called him Whitford — but was he not a sailor? 
She ought to know better. But to single him out for 
titles and distinction, would not that have been worse? 

She ought — she ought- Yet it was him she had 

singled out. And the black despair following upon stu¬ 
pidity, more poignant than the barb of any misfortune, 
shook him suddenly like an ague. He had been hideously, 
intolerably stupid — he, a Man? —and she, a wonderful 
girl, beautiful and kind as they make them. Oh, damn 
it all! And he sank into a stupor of bitterness that 
darkened the most radiant day he had yet seen in the 
luminous Pacific. With savage fury that yet seemed 
false and hollow, he pictured the relief when once the 
ship was rid of her. 

To arrest the course of events, to retrace a step once 
taken, to cry back, — the impossibility of that is one of 
the most ancient of all the lessons that man has failed 
to learn. In reckless, youthful prodigality he would have 
given years of his life to undo what he had done, to 
have once again the opportunity of speaking to her, to 
let his utmost soul look into her friendly eyes, to speak 



48 


THE ESCAPE 


to this generous though disturbing girl with abject 
humility, to efface his corroding rudeness. The gibes 
of those of the crew who had seen her speak to him 
passed almost unheard through his brain, aching with 
futile plans and problems. Not again came the oppor¬ 
tunity, nor was it likely to come. For whenever he saw 
her thereafter, either the mate Brandon was attentively 
near, or else her father, or she was absorbed in reading. 
So far as her eyes were concerned, seaman Roderic Whit- 
ford no longer existed. 

Days grew shorter as they were growing longer. 
Islands were now being passed, to the keen-edged excite¬ 
ment of all on board; fragrances came drifting toward 
the ship and aquatic birds, the gulls, the flying bosuns, 
hovered joyfully about the rigging. Great luscious 
moons overhung the nights and the days were aflood with 
a sunlight so dazzling, so intoxicating, that the sailors 
could hardly believe duty was expected of them, though 
they went about it like creatures charged with fires in 
their veins. 

It was at dawn one day, when Roderic was on deck, 
that landfall was cried and the white band of distant 
breakers on the barrier reef brought the captain in his 
pyjamas upon deck. As the island lifted from the spark¬ 
ling sea, a mass of verdure from the depths of blue, 
towering to a peak beneath the clouds, it suddenly pro¬ 
duced to Rodericks eyes the strange illusion of some 
gigantic flower hanging chalice downward from the skies. 
The fringe of feathery cocoa palms that for some mys¬ 
terious reason always tender welcome to man’s eyes, as 
though bringing back primeval memories of the cradle 
days of his race, inclined their friendly heads toward 
the distant ship in invitation. 

Now began the intoxicating business of beating about 
for the break in the reef which is the harbor of Papeete, 


RANZO 


49 


and every hour brought new beauties to sun-dazzled eyes. 
A blur of light, a blue lagoon, gleaming white walls and 
red roofs, the rattling rush of anchor chains, a swarm 
of canoes and boats with joyous bronzelike native^, 
shouting, laughing, bearing all the fruits of the tropics, 
and the Alice, her long voyage nearly over, was riding in 
the harbor of Papeete. 

No human being from the chilling northern zones 
can come for the first time to a tropic land without ex¬ 
periencing the shock of regret that must have fallen upon 
Adam on expulsion from the Garden of Delight. The 
cosmic freshness of tropical verdure and landscape, the 
fragrant luxuriant innocence, the Edenlike abundance, 
reminds one too poignantly of the price that is paid in 
care and melancholy for triumphing over cold and frost 
and snow in higher latitudes. A hidden neglected 
shutter of the mind leaps open and ancient gayeties, 
primal satisfactions, a forgotten laughing joyousness is 
revealed to one’s soul, never more to be forgotten, always 
thenceforth to be yearned after. The rustling plumelike 
palms welcome the newcomer softly back to Eden whence 
an inscrutable Deity had once expelled the race. It was 
so the little shutter clicked in Roderic’s brain, and for 
a space the heady, kindly tumult of that blue lagoon, of 
that dazzling sunlight and glistening verdure suffused his 
brain like a sparkling wine. A hubbub, a fabulous full¬ 
ness of joy, as though all nature were softly laughing, 
surrounded and permeated the far-traveled ship, so that 
even Brandon, alert and magisterial at the gangway, 
seemed glad under protest, reluctantly benignant. 

Port formalities were quickly over, shot through with 
gestures, smiles and French uniforms. The passengers 
were landing. They were going ashore. This joyous 
world was swallowing them up. The girl, Allene Gal¬ 
braith, was being absorbed as of right into this 


50 


THE ESCAPE 


wondrously happy world where she incontestably 
belonged. His eyes, now miserably unrestrained, kept 
roving in her direction. 

On a sudden his heart gave a bound. For as she bent 
downward over a piece of her luggage, a swift strange 
glance from her soft eyes, a glance at once puzzled, 
searching and kindly, momentarily overtook his own and 
they hung together for an instant. The cord, silken and 
gossamerlike, that had vibrated between them, how im¬ 
perceptibly soever, in the tiny world of the ship, suddenly 
tautened with an inexplicable tractile strength* and gave 
a tug at his heart like a cable. 

The lustrous world abruptly lost much of its light. 
Would he ever see her again? Allene suddenly 
straightened up, and the face and form of her stood 
silhouetted against the dazzling deck in an aura of beauty 
so alluring and imperishable that all the barriers fallen 
away in that single glance between them rose again to 
put miles of distance between her and himself. An over¬ 
whelming longing suddenly showed him a vision of him¬ 
self standing eagerly before her, in friendly colloquy, 
all his brusque rudeness to her magically cleared away, 
and she laughing in gentle forgiveness. 

“ To the Tiare — the Tiare Hotel,” he heard some one 
utter as from a void, and she was going — leaving the 
ship! A dull weight of profound regret swept over him, a 
wave of bereavement. The light and the glory were sud¬ 
denly departing. Cold drops of perspiration beaded his 
forehead under that tropic sun. 

‘‘ Look at that young woman! ” crowed Captain Flitch, 
bustling up with outward turned thumb, pointing at the 
girl’s exquisite coloring. “ Make her second mate next 
time she sails in this ship. Knock the men about — she 
would.” 


RANZO 


51 


“Stiff voyage, Captain,” chuckled Galbraith; “stiff 
voyage but paid dividends, that did.” 

They were leaving. He would never see her again! 

“What’s the matter, Ranzo?” demanded Billy of 
Bangor. “ You look half-shot. ’S that what the sight 
of the brown girls in the canoes ’s done to you already? 
You wait till you go ashore!” 

Roderic awoke as from some incredible trance. 
“ Ain’t you glad those folks are off,” Billy pursued, “ so 
we can get some shore leave?” 

“ You bet! ” he answered absently with the manner and 
language Billy best understood. 

And he emphasized the exuberance of his enthusiasm 
with a twisted smile. 


i '- ■ 


■ ! 


A 


,1 





PART II 


A NEW WORLD 

CHAPTER VI 

THE SEARCH 

A few months in the Pacific had made a vast difference 
in Roderic. 

I see him now, wandering about the waterfront of 
Suva with its barefoot savage-looking Fijian policemen; 
in the streets of Auckland and Sydney, with their 
strangely familiar, American-like civilization in the re¬ 
mote antipodes; observant, curious, the same Roderic, yet 
infinitely different. His mind at this time was a shining 
proof to those who maintain that evolution proceeds by 
leaps as well as by slow infinitesimal changes. 

The vast unexplored world that had been a beckoning, 
a luring mystery to the boy, was now a somewhat bat¬ 
tered, matter-of-fact familiar. Not precisely familiar in 
the sense that it is to those prosaic seamen who begin 
yarns with, “ I think it was in Shanghai one day,” or “ I 
saw that fellow first on the Bund at Yokohama.” But 
Roderic had made that early discovery of traveled men: 
that the world, at its farthest, consists of people with a 
human nature singularly akin to his own, that they 
proceed to adapt themselves, to build and to organize 
their life in very much the same manner throughout the 
globe. 


54 


A NEW WORLD 


He had learned to think of himself, in those remote 
places, without the little thin cloak of self-pity that re¬ 
mains to some of us from childhood; to laugh at him¬ 
self wherever the vestigial reflection occurred to him: 
“ It is I, alone in this distant spot! ” He was a man 
among men, a sailor and self-reliant. He knew how to 
take care of himself. He cared little for drinking and 
shrank instinctively from the sailors’ promiscuous 
philandering with native and other women at the sea¬ 
ports. He had fought a fist fight with Hornblow before 
the Pier Hotel at Suva, because he would not drink with 
the Liverpool ex-stoker and had come off with a black 
eye and a night in the calaboose, to which both com¬ 
batants had been haled by those club-armed ferocious 
Fijian policemen. “ Life is life,” he might have safely 
observed and felt that this platitude represented his own 
profound discovery, his innermost conviction. Platitudes 
are a stage in the mind’s evolution. 

He had had plans, hazy yet sunlit plans of stirring ad¬ 
venturous youth, to visit every spot of importance in this 
portion of the globe. Sailors at the bars and in the water¬ 
front eating houses made tantalizing allusions to the 
China coast, to Kow-Lung and Canton, to Japan, to 
Singapore and the Straits, to names familiar to those 
seas, to Rodrigues of Macao, to Shiney Smith of Amoy, 
to Levy the pearl buyer, — and Roderic was filled with 
desire to drink up that knowledge and to return home a 
completely traveled man. 

But one day, at Sydney, just as he had decided to ship 
for Hong Kong and the coast, a sudden vision reeled into 
his brain unbidden, a vision of the quiet lamplit home 
he had left, of the garden and the flowers, the hedge and 
the drooping mulberry, a broad demesne redolent of 
phlox and honeysuckle, rich in midsummer drip and 
shade, a picture of cool tranquil perfection, a haven of 


THE SEARCH 


55 


such beauty that it clamped his heart like a sudden mag¬ 
netic current. For an instant, with a throb of triumph, 
he saw also the girl Myrtle Thornley, with her mocking 
eyes, informing him that he was not a man! The momen¬ 
tary sense of superiority, however, was wiped out by the 
wave of nostalgia that swept him in the wake of that 
vision of home. He must go back, go back now — at 
once — as fast as a ship could take him. 

There was a steamer for San Francisco, a tramp 
steamer that was sailing in a few days. He might have 
to shovel coal throughout a Pacific voyage, under equa¬ 
torial heat, but no matter. He must seek a berth aboard 
her; he must go home. The world of the Orient, with its 
strange names and beckoning ports, suddenly loomed 
harsh and thin and empty against the warm substantial 
reality of home. 

It was an early June day in Sydney, cold and blustery, 
when Roderic, now driven by this quest for a homeward 
berth, and hurrying along the waterfront, heard behind 
him the doggerel, 

“ Oh, Ranzo was no sailor, 

Ranzo boys, O Ranzo 
So they shipped him aboard a whaler, 

Ranzo boys, O Ranzo. . . 


The voice also was familiar. He wheeled about and 
beheld the grinning countenance of Billy of Bangor. 

“ Hello, Ranzo,” shouted Billy, with a wave. “ I 
thought I recognized your stern. Where you plowing 
to, eh ? ” 

“ Going to find the ship that’ll take me home,” Roderic 
informed him, seizing his great paw. “ I must get back 
to the States.” 

“ What is she — steamer ? ” 


56 


A NEW WORLD 


“Yes — have to get some speed on. Fooling around 
here too long.” 

“ Oh, Ranzo! ” expostulated Billy in derision. “ Like 
to shovel coal in hell, d’you? ” 

“ Can’t be helped,” said Roderic laconically. “ It’s 
quick, anyway.” Yes, it was quick! And the past ten 
months with their crowded richness of a lifetime’s ex¬ 
perience suddenly seemed thin and tawdry, — a ragged 
shadow. 

“ Why don’t you go home like a gentlemen,” pursued 
Billy, “ on a real ship that’s clean, with a breeze always 
blowing through your whiskers — a ship like the Alice? ” 

“ No,” Roderic told him positively. “ I want speed. 
I’m going home.” Speed, his national fever, was in his 
blood. 

“ Oh, hell I ” cried Billy in disgust. “ Some skirt 
waitin’ for you, I guess. ’Taint in reason to pass up the 
Alice and our Old Man Flitch, — he’s a bird. An’ I’m 
his second mate now. I’ll have you to know. Captain 
Ranzo. Come on, old stick-in-the-mud,” he urged para¬ 
doxically upon this seeker after speed. “ Ship with us, 
stop at Papeete, have a glass o’ beer at Louis’, see the 
Vfjhines, dance — what’s your sweat? Lots of time!” 

Then suddenly, in a quiver of light on the bright deck 
before him, was standing Allene Galbraith. She was 
bending forward and, from under her long dark eye¬ 
lashes, her singular glance, puzzled and searching and 
kindly, came to him, not momentary now, but persistent 
and haunting, fixed in space, absolute, permanent as by 
some magical process, so that he could not dispel it. 
Papeete! That was where he had last seen her! 

“ When,” he finally asked, as one emerging from a 
dream, after a long pause, “ when does the Alice sail? ” 

“ Ah, the beer and the vahines got you, old Ranzo! 
She sails in about four days,” he added more soberly. 


THE SEARCH 


57 


‘‘ She’s waitin’ for a load of rabbit skins. Like rabbit 
skins, Ranzo? Come on back with me and sign up/* 
prompted Billy. 

“Might as well,” murmured Roderic indifferently, 
“ specially as I stand in with the second mate, who’ll 
make the Kanakas do all the work.” He was hardly 
aware what he was saying, for the persistent image of 
the Papeete lagoon clung to his mind ineluctably. i 

“You watch!” cried Billy in triumphant importance. 
“You’ll be a real sailor if you sail with me — and the 
Old Man,” he added conscientiously. “ Do you know 
that old boy’s record? Smart he is, smart as paint. 
Comes from somewhere in England, Essex or Skeezix 
or somewhere. Was a country haggler — a kind of 
peddler, I guess — then went off with a small circus in 
South America. He was everything in that circus, man¬ 
ager, foreman, press agent, side show, the clown, the 
elephant, and maybe the tent. But in his trips with the 
circus in small boats, the sea got him. When this old 
one-horse circus broke up at Rio, he shipped before the 
mast on an old hooker heatin’ round the Horn. Now 
look where he is I His own schooner, dandy home at Suva 
— got a daughter pretty’s a little red wagon. I’m for 
her — that little gal; stick to old Flitch, I say — a good 
skipper! ” 

Roderic heard this recital, unusually serious for Billy, 
with that impersonal counterfeit attention that is cen¬ 
tered on its own thought. But his thought was nothing 
more than a picture, a brilliant vision under a dazzling 
sun on the Papeete lagoon, a girl whose eyes were ques¬ 
tioning why he had been a boor and a pig to her on the 
voyage westward. Accompanying the vision was a sound 
in his ears that might have been the distant roar of the 
surf on the barrier reef or the throbbing of his own 


58 A NEW WORLD 

blood. He could not tell. Papeete was suddenly become 
an objective, a quest, and a goal, the only goal. 

Billy’s rapid narration having come to a full stop. Rod- 
eric, with a sudden start, to prove that he had been 
listening, demanded: 

“ How long do we stop at Papeete? ” 

“ Oh, a few days. The old man buys up little lots of 
vanilla beans, bits of copra from the Chinamen and 
carries it to ’Frisco on his own. Trust the skipper to 
look out for his end,” he crowed with shrewd delight. 

“ A few days in Papeete,” Roderic said to himself. 
And his previous indifference was turned to a fever of 
desire to be aboard the Alice^ to make sail, to cut the 
blue Pacific for the harbor of Papeete. 

When once the Alice lay anchored in view of the gleam¬ 
ing coral mole in the harbor of Papeete, waiting for 
her vanilla beans, a queen among the trading schooners 
that surrounded her, all pointing adventurously seaward, 
Roderic learned in all its plenitude the bitter disenchant¬ 
ment that follows on attainment. He had craved to be 
at Papeete. He was at Papeete. What, he asked himself 
dumbly, had he hoped for? Had he expected to meet 
Allene Galbraith on the quays or in the streets, and gal¬ 
lantly, like another Raleigh, cast his cloak before her 
feet and be suddenly lifted to her intimacy? He might 
as well have counted upon meeting with Queen Elizabeth. 
The last of those glowing impossible illusions of 
adolescence, that are said never wholly to leave a man, 
dropped away heavily from Roderic as he wandered about 
the winding streets of the embowered little city in the 
Pacific. 

The shops and the coffee houses, the warehouses, the 
restaurants told him no more than might have those of 
Boston. The red and gray roofs peering from a green 


THE SEARCH 


59 


world of foliage, with a wall of mountains as an over¬ 
hanging background, told of nothing but blank strange¬ 
ness. The tree-lined lanes, the brilliant flamboyants, the 
golden-hued Allamandas, the princely breadfruit trees 
with leaves actually shaped like an open-fingered hand 
— reserving nothing — the gigantic creepers in a riot 
of competition upon walls and roofs and trellises con¬ 
fided no more than their robust irresistible fecundity. 
Hedges of mock coffee along gardens were piteously 
reminiscent of Adam’s Rock and the drooping pandanus 
oddly recalled the mulberry at home. And therein, in 
that word home, lay all the cue. 

Could older men be so foolish, he asked himself, to go 
seeking for a will-o’-the-wisp? The belief in the wisdom 
of the elders is a weed, that, despite the cynics, dies hard 
in the breast of youth. If only the elders had the wisdom 
and the skill to utilize that belief! Even a discreet in¬ 
quiry or two revealed nothing, absolutely nothing, of 
the Galbraiths. No one whom he asked had ever heard 
of the name, and those who might have known, merchants 
and the like, he dared not ask. He was a common sailor 
before the mast. 

The Galbraiths’ island, he told himself, might be near 
at hand, or hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles away. 
The Pacific was broad and now seemed to him limitless. 
Then on a sudden, when he had given up the search, and 
the Alice was all but ready for sea, inspiration came to 
him. With true Yankee ingenuity he hit upon a plan that 
ought to lead to certain knowledge. The British Consul! 
He would certainly know of any British inhabitant as 
prominent as the chief occupant of an island in the region. 
His shore leave was over, but with a last despairing ef¬ 
fort, in abashed eagerness, he hastened to the British 
consulate to make his tremendous inquiry. Supposing 
his quest were rewarded, he asked himself, supposing 


60 


A NEW WORLD 


he learned the whereabouts of the Galbraiths — what 
could he do about it ? Desert the ship at the last moment 
and turn beach comber? He might return on another 
voyage — Captain Flitch might let him off — a farrago 
of tumultuous, impossibilities raced through his brain, but 
they failed to halt his steps toward the British consulate. 
Finally, with a palpitating heart, he stood before the door, 
the British shield forbiddingly prominent to his eyes. 
With a racing mind he was endeavoring to frame his 
query in words. Suddenly the door opened. From its 
darkling precincts, bustling with papers in his hands, 
emerged the rubicund, jocund figure of Captain Flitch. 

“ What, lad! ” he cried exuberantly expostulant. 

Still here ? Man alive, we sail with the tide! Who 
gave you leave ? Come along, my lad, and be quick about 
it; do! Here, I say,” he added as an after-thought, 
sharply. “ Here is twenty francs — run ahead and get 
the latest American reading stuff you can get for the 
money — weeklies, story papers, — you know the kind 
— and be quick about it, boy — run! ” 

Thus, with the sound of doom echoing through his 
brain, with the sense of irreparable finality that only the 
inexperienced in Fate know, Rodericks quest in Papeete 
was ended. 


^^HAPTER VII 


THE STORM 

Homeward bound! ” cried Billy of Bangor as the 
Alice was heading eastward through the innumerable 
islands and atolls of the Low Archipelago. Is there 
anything to beat those two words — or this little boat? ” 
In the pride of his dignity as second mate, Billy was not 
ostentatious in his conversations with a seaman before 
the mast. But, after all, Roderic had been a sort of pal 
of his and Bangor was not so far removed from Adams 
Rock. 

“ Did you ever see anything the way the old man works 
through these shoals and atolls? This is right where he 
lives — knows every one of these little sand heaps the 
way you might know Nantasket or Mother Carey’s 
Chickens. We’ll cross the line at about 120 degrees and 
then for Acapulco and ’Frisco! ” 

“ Acapulco! ” exclaimed Roderic in surprised disgust. 

Where the devil’s that — and why do we go there? ” 

“ Oh, that’s Mexico,” with off-hand ease. ‘‘ Old Man’s 
got some cargo for the place. But then it’s right up the 
coast for ’Frisco. Won’t take us much out of the way 
— except for these measly islands right here. If only 
we don’t stick in the doldrums north of the line.” 

“ You swindler! ” cried Roderic, laughing ruefully. 
‘‘ And here I shipped on this hooker because she was 
going straight home! ” 

“ Didn’t know it myself till we got to Papeete,” Billy 
grinned defensively. “ Our real boss is Mr. Cargo, as 


62 


A NEW WORLD 


you’ll find, young feller,” and he added some trifling 
order for Rod^ric to execute, to cover his lapse into sheer 
sociability, now he was a mate. 

The crew was now mostly Kanaka. Old Carmichael 
was still on board and so were the cook and the car¬ 
penter. The forecastle deckhouse was almost empty, 
only one side of it being occupied. All the white men 
of whatever watch berthed together on the port side of 
the bulkhead out of a gregarious instinct that drove them 
together. The Kanakas slept on mats upon the deck be¬ 
tween the forepeak and foremast, like dogs, the white 
men said, because the brown men preferred fresh air to 
fetid. 

It was early morning, and the Kanakas off watch were 
eating their breakfast, still largely consisting of feis, 
cocoanuts and breadfruit while they lasted, out of a single 
mess kit, which was a huge wooden bowl. The faint 
aroma of coffee came to Roderic’s nostrils as he passed 
the squatting group, cheerful and laughing, vocal in their 
babbling tongue that seemed all lisping and vowels to 
his ear. He grinned at their greeting, conscientiously 
American, of “Hello!” and gave them back Y or anna, 
whereat they laughed. 

When he reemerged from the forepeak hold, they were 
no longer laughing. They were all on their feet, sniffing 
the air and looking up to the hazy heavens. The light 
breeze that had been barely filling the sails, had died to 
an intense lifelessness, a pallid silence, broken only by 
the sounds of swinging hooks and gaffs. They stared at 
him dully as he came toward them and shook their heads. 

“ No good,” one of them, a giant of over six feet four, 
informed Roderic with melancholy liquid eyes, like a 
troubled spaniel. 

“ A calm,” murmured Roderic and glancing over the 
rail he saw the ship barely gliding through an oily sea. 


THE STORM 


63 


her remaining impetus alone giving her steerage way. 
There was not a ripple at the bows. 

“ Looka! ” the giant Kanaka pointed eastward. In the 
distance a heavy bank of clouds was massively covering 
the horizon. With a great rush as of invisible wings it 
was coming up, a monster bent on devouring the sky. 

In an instant all was confusion. The Kanakas had 
abandoned their breakfast half-eaten. Billy came run¬ 
ning forward, shouting for all hands; the new first mate 
was on deck giving orders, and the captain in his pyjamas 
at the cabin hatchway, still unshaven, was muttering 
something to the effect that the barometer had gone dotty. 
The sense of impending calamity, like a palpable being, 
seemed to have taken possession of the ship. 

Kanakas and white men alike were soon swarming at 
the rigging, hauling, clewing up, making fast the stay¬ 
sails, topsails, and jibs. The sickly-colored air gave no 
life to these efforts; one seemed to be pulling at weights 
without leverage, and the Kanakas, chattering in under¬ 
tones as they worked, added to the eerie effect of ominous 
foreboding. 

“ Prenty rain,’^ muttered the big Kanaka working be¬ 
side Roderic on the flying jibboom, “ Prenty wind come 
— hurricane.” 

“ It’s only a calm,” Roderic murmured lightly, by way 
of reassuring himself, as he was passing the gaskets 
round the canvas. 

“ Him hurricane,” declared the Kanaka firmly, his eyes 
glittering into the white man’s for an instant, as though 
expecting to find — yet hoping not to find — fear in 
them. 

Memory is a tricky witness to a capital crisis in the life 
of a man. It throws up, when pressed, a scattered mass 
of trifling detail, a looming event here and there, a se¬ 
quence broken by blurs, confusions, and darknesses. Ac- 


64? 


A NEW WORLD 


curacy in recollection, at no time more necessary, is at 
no time less certain. 

The captain disappeared into the cabin and very soon 
returned dressed and in his full squat dignity, with a 
masterful cheerfulness. The tension became relaxed. He 
could not bear to have his ship, the pride of his life, 
merely rolling about. He sniffed every side for wind. 
He thumbed his Pacific directory in the chart room; he 
came out and peered into the heavens. The old man 
knew his Pacific and he would get all he could out of 
his ship before the trouble came. 

Put the topsails on her,” he ordered the mate sharply. 
The topsails gave the ship but little energy in her gasping 
languor. The men kept gazing about with a suppressed 
anxiety, as though in constant expectation of some dread 
messenger from heaven with a tragic message. Presently 
the first whitecaps came rolling toward the ship from 
the northeast and all eyes were unobstrusively yet tensely 
turned upon them, as though the dread message were at 
hand. 

Instantly the captain, without a trace of cheerfulness 
now, shouted orders to take in sail and the ship became 
a hive of frenzied activity. Almost before the order 
could be carried out the gale struck her on the starboard 
bow and a number of Kanakas rolled over headlong and 
were clutching wildly at the lee rail in a welter of foam¬ 
ing water in the scuppers, like some grotesque figures in 
a Dore picture. Carmichael and Roderic were at the 
wheel, but their combined strength and all of Carmichael’s 
experience were unavailing to right her. The men passed 
gaskets around their bodies. There was hoarse, strange 
orders that those strong men have a care not to be washed 
overboard, like small boys warned not to go out in the 
wet. The ship was awash, fore and aft, and the rigging 
of life lines on the dangerously slanting decks for the 


THE STORM 


65 


crew to cling to seemed like a questionable remedy, with 
more risk than the disease. 

Sea after sea came hurtling over her in thunders of de¬ 
structive tumult, so that the ship quivered and shook, as 
though every tremor would be her last. What, it occurred 
to Roderic, was the use of fighting this monstrous world 
of waves and foam, to which the ship was like a shaving 
in a surf? A clear-eyed stoicism had suddenly settled 
upon him in the face of disaster. A deathly calm entered 
his soul. Oil bags were ordered overboard and those 
with difficulty were made fast to lines and cast astern. 
The ship might have been a bit of cork for all the re¬ 
sponse she made to wheel or oil bags. They might as well 
have been children’s toy balloons. Then, on a sudden, 
one of the masts went crashing over the lee rail with a 
deadly lacerating sound of splintering; and simultaneously 
a green sea seemed to plunge the ship under water, arid 
he remembered clinging to the wheel, submerged, cling¬ 
ing with deathlike grip. 

From then on, in the blackness of the hurricane noW 
directly over him and the welter of angry waters, all in 
Roderic’s mind was confusion. He remembered only 
that Carmichael, who was there an instant before, was 
no longer there. Wild, grotesque figures, like maddened 
phantoms, were flying and crawling and clinging here 
and there. He was in the raging sea. He expected death. 
On a sudden a tiny flash of light, as though a camera 
shutter had abruptly opened in his mind, showed him a 
vivid picture and instantly closed again. In that thin 
clear flash he had seen not the home of his father at 
Adam’s Rock, not the tranquil rooms or the peaceful 
garden toward which he had been hurrying, but the face 
of a girl — smiling, radiant, yet troubled and gazing 
questioningly, intently into his eyes — she who had drawn 


66 


A NEW WORLD 


him so irresistibly, the girl of his search, — Allene 
Galbraith. 

What came after was a long series of dream visions, 
a farrago of polar scenes of snow and ice and dim, 
menacing, white monsters, as well as sunlit beaches and 
waving palms with dazzling laughing skies overhead. He 
resumed consciousness at moments like a sleeper half- 
wakened by the sun, who then immediately relapses into 
dreams. But through it all there was a grim undersense 
of clinging to something with a strange unshakable power 
and the sensation of being lifted up only to be hurled 
again from great heights into a welter of foam. 

He became aware suddenly at the same moment of 
two facts: he was clinging to one of the two small rafts 
of the Alice and the sky was perceptibly lighter. He was 
still being alternately plunged into depths and raised 
high aloft, but the dream visions were absent. He looked 
to the right of him and the giant Kanaka was clinging 
to the other end of the raft. The Kanaka was both 
swimming and in a measure propelling the raft. The 
man’s face was the color of brown ashes. 

“ Bad! ” he uttered the single word as they rode on 
the crest of a wave, and he grinned faintly. And the 
struggle continued through an infinity of time, of hurling 
and plunging, of intense and concentrated triumph over 
the impossible. But always the sky was growing lighter. 

“ More better! ” the Kanaka rattled out hoarsely, and 
the relief of those words sent a faint thrill through 
Roderic’s vitals. 

“ Where are the others? ” He shouted as he thought, 
but his voice was unheard by the Kanaka, who shook 
his head. Perhaps he had guessed Roderic’s query. At 
all events, the question answered itself. There was no 
sign or vestige of anything pertaining to the Alice ex- 


THE STORM 67 

cepting this small raft with her name painted on it and 
the two clinging castaways. 

The cleaving to life may be largely a mechanical affair, 
but the subconscious, unless charged with the burden of 
time, takes no thought of human hours. The breaking- 
up of the clouds and the emergence of the sun over the 
heavy rollers gave him unquestionably, in his then state, 
the effect of sunrise. A slight throb of joy warmed his 
thought. Then, as he dully reflected on the lonely speck 
of the raft in the vast solitude of troubled waters, his 
heart sank back into the heavy lassitude that is beyond 
hope or despair. But one must be a seaman for many 
years before one wholly abandons the passenger’s trust in 
ultimate salvation from the deep. 

Think we’ll get picked up? ” He nevertheless made 
the effort to ask of the Kanaka. 

“ Maybe — maybe no,” was the resigned reply of the 
brown giant. Night come — he bad.” 

“ Night! ” cried Roderic with the sickness of death in 
his soul. “ Isn’t the sun coming up? ” 

“ No — him go down,” the man answered simply, and 
he smiled with a sad headshake. 

Night was coming, not day. The heaviness of exhaus¬ 
tion was dragging at Roderic’s limbs. A weary, numb¬ 
ing twilight state settled upon his mind and body. He 
clung on for a time. The westering sun was disappearing 
swiftly as though the havoc of the day had never been. 
The cruel indifference of nature to her creatures suddenly 
penetrated his consciousness like a barbed shaft of malice. 
What was the use ? 

“ You go on,” he murmured finally to the Kanaka. 
“ I’m done. I’ll let go.” 

“ No, no,” cried the brown man, and his great naked 
chest heaved with deep concern. “ You lay down — rest. 
More better I take care.” With an effort he helped the 


68 


A NEW WORLD 


white man to scramble farther up on the raft. He sought 
Roderic’s belt; an inspiration came to him. Gropingly 
he unfastened it, passed it through one of the shoulder 
straps of Roderic’s dungarees and round one of the 
timbers of the raft and clasped the end of the belt in the 
buckle. 

“ Now you rest good,” he charged him and still he 
continued, three-fourths of him in the water, to propel 
the raft on the heaving sea. Again and again the waves 
washed over it, submerged and tossed it, but always it 
reemerged and gradually the sea subsided. 

Under the piercing brilliance of the stars, Roderic was 
wakened from his semi-stupor to a consciousness of in¬ 
tense and burning thirst. He was about to ask for water 
when the folly of it penetrated him like a slow poison 
and he sank back in silence. The Kanaka was lying 
stretched out beside him under the warm night, clinging 
with his hands to the timbers of the raft, his eyes sweep¬ 
ing the starlit horizon. 

From a state of perturbed, weltering semiconsciou^ess, 
from broken fragmentary dreams of cascades of ciystal- 
clear water in the mountains, Roderic awoke to a shout 
of the Kanaka that set him quivering. 

“Looka! Looka!” cried the Kanaka. “ Oba theah! 
Him land — suah! ” 

And Roderic saw that the sky was already aflame, 
presumably in the east, with strange fires. The rim of 
the sun had barely cleared the horizon. The world was 
filled with a clear and untarnished, with an untainted 
serenity that made Roderic gasp in the light of the tragedy 
of yesterday. Assuredly this was a strange moment in 
which to thrill to beauty, but it made upon his mind 
an indelible impression as the very essence of beauty. 
From this low point of visibility on the raft, he strained 
his eyes eagerly in the direction the Kanaka indicated. 


THE STORM 


69 


Faintly he perceived a white milky radiance heaving 
and swaying in a line curving away from his gaze, and 
a faint possibly greenish hue beyond the gleaming white. 
Him land! ’’ cried the Kanaka, now wildly dancing 
upon the raft. “ Maybe island — maybe ring — atoll — 
I see him palms! ” And as though to save his breath 
from further speech, he leaped backward into the now 
almost placid sea and began swimming madly, propel¬ 
ling the raft now with one hand, now with the other as 
he swam. 

Fresh energies were suddenly stirring in Rodericks ex¬ 
hausted body. From some subcellar in his organism a 
new access of feverish force came to him. He also 
slipped into the water and his hands resting on the raft 
he began swimming and pushing the other end of it. 
His gaze was fixed steadily upon the horizon where the 
white line had been. The Kanaka’s eyes, however, roved 
hither and thither and over his shoulders with anxious 
vigilance. 

‘‘Still looking for the others?” inquired Roderic 
faintly. This side of heaven he expected never again to 
see any other soul connected with the Alice. 

“ No,” said the Kanaka briefly. “ Me looka sharks.” 

Roderic grinned to himself piteously. This was a new 
terror unthought of. The gift of life seemed to be held 
by human beings on so very precarious a tenure. They 
swam on for a time in silence, until finally the Kanaka 
motioned him to scramble up on the raft. Roderic shook 
his head; though his spurt of strength was ebbing fast, 
he was determined to do his share. But the islander 
perceiving his weakness, swung himself out of the water 
upon the raft and seizing one of Roderic’s hands drew 
him up without further speech. 

Simultaneously and in silence they both shaded their 
eyes and gazed intently toward the line of white. It 


70 


A NEW WORLD 


was quite appreciably nearer and the haze dissolving under 
the rising sun showed the green beyond distinctly as 
vegetation crowding a slope close to the water. Gulls 
were wheeling about and the booming of the surf could 
now be distinctly heard. The sound of the white barrier 
was not inviting. Rodericks brown shipmate shook his 
head perplexedly. 

“What’s the matter?” demanded Roderic, his heart 
throbbing in a throat made seemingly of hot corrugated 
zinc. 

“ No can do,” and the Kanaka explained in his manner 
that they were on the wrong side of the island, outside 
the barrier reef that nature in those parts puts like a 
moat round her garden spots, with only a small opening 
opposite some water course, where the coral refuses to 
build. The thundering surf is nothing to the little beasts 
and they build their rampart under its very hammer 
strokes. But a trickle of fresh water coming down a hill 
is enough to drive them away, thus leaving an opening 
in the reef opposite. To find that opening before their 
strength gave out was now the problem. Even as they 
talked and gazed, the roaring white wall seemed to be 
drawing nearer and its sound ever louder. 

“Can’t we swim round?” Roderic, feeling ignorant 
and helpless, nevertheless ventured. 

“ T’inka no,” muttered the Kanaka. “ Strong current 
— him go fast.” 

A strong current! That was the secret of their rapid 
progress toward the island which Roderic had imagined 
was achieved wholly by dint of their swimming. But in 
that progress also lay their undoing. For in, the course 
of an hour or two, if not in less time, that current was 
certain to dash them, raft and all, upon the reef and there, 
under the thundering foam, they would perish and pass 
into the structure of the coral wall. 


THE STORM 


71 


The Kanaka — statuesque, erect, his muscles auto¬ 
matically accommodating themselves to the slight sway¬ 
ing of the raft — stood for some time staring at the 
slowly nearing island, lost in what was for him the 
supreme effort, thought. In his ordinary life his instincts 
and the thought of others had largely sufficed. Now 
Roderic also grappled with thought painfully, as might 
a child. He felt himself penetrated by a wave of dull 
despondency. To be so near safety and yet to have it 
dashed from one’s hands; to have survived the ship¬ 
wreck that he could hardly yet bring himself to think of, 
except as a gruesome blur of the whole immediately 
tragic past; to be in sight of life and yet in the grip 
of death seemed a foolish preposterous nightmare. 
Death, death, death! What a stupid solution! But that 
seemed the favorite answer in the problem book of ex¬ 
istence. Something, however, a force stronger than he, 
restrained him. The next moment! The unguessed pos¬ 
sibility, the latent uncertainty, of the next moment held 
him riveted to life as it has held myriads of others, and 
with a horrid fascination of tense expectancy he clung to 
what remained of life. 

With every minute they drew nearer to the reef. The 
island, so far as they could tell, was roughly heart-shaped, 
with the apex or point toward them. The barrier reef 
that upon the other side of the land no doubt had a break 
and an entrance to still water and safety, here and for 
some distance either way actually adjoined the land, so 
that reef and shore line were one. The current was cer¬ 
tain to carry them up on the reef, regardless of any puny 
efforts of theirs. They did nothing therefore but awaited 
the inevitable. 

Louder and louder boomed the surf and the geyser¬ 
like cloud of spray over the wall of foam made magic 
rainbows in the sun that kept burning ever hotter. The 


72 


A NEW WORLD 


sea, except for the thundering surf, was a carpet of 
jewelled velvet, the liquid floor of a possible • heaven so 
sparkling blue, it made Rodericks heart ache with the 
heedless unconcerned beauty of it. Like a pair of birds 
spellbound by some gigantic reptile, white man and brown 
both kept gazing at their doom with a sickening lethargic 
fascination, as death kept drawing nearer and nearer. 
The blowing palm trees and the spiral-like tufted pandanus 
now discernible, just beyond, seemed already to be mur¬ 
muring litanies over those to be delivered from the body 
of this death. Birds were hovering over the foliage. 
Gulls circled like vultures, crying overhead. A delicious 
fragrance came floating to their nostrils. 

Suddenly the Kanaka leaped overboard and, clinging 
to the raft, he began propelling it as he had done before. 
He signalled with his head to Roderic to do the same. 
What was in his mind it is impossible to say, for he did 
not speak. Possibly he hoped that if the raft were pushed 
quickly broadside on into the boiling surf, it might act 
as a catapult and fling the clinging castaways upon the 
thin strip of sand or into the vegetation beyond and thus 
possibly save them. In any case, Roderic dumbly com¬ 
plied; speech was impossible for the roar of the waters. 

Ever nearer and nearer they drew. But on a sudden 
the Kanaka’s hands flew up. A wave of terror and pain 
distorted his broad features — a shriek of anguish faintly 
reached Roderic’s ears — and he disappeared from sight. 
But one thing was visible, — sheering away to the right; 
the tip of a slate-gray triangular object that might have 
been the dark sail of a tov boat, — a shark’s fin! 

The terror of the Kanaka’s face and his agonized 
shriek struck like a charge of shot into Roderic’s heart. 
Unable to do anything else, he clung to the raft for an 
instant of intense, clear-sighted, silent expectancy of death 
and a similar fate amid the roaring of the waters. Yet, 


THE STORM 


73 


death — death for him — was it possible ? On a sudden 
he was being swept into the maelstrom, his breath cut 
off — swung and violently shaken and hurled high amid 
the spray and deafening roar — and the light of day 
and consciousness of life were both abruptly extinguished. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE GIRL OF THE ISLAND 

Voiceless birds of many colors were hovering overhead. 
A faint breeze was stirring through the coco-palm leaves, 
so that they rustled with a silken metallic sound inde¬ 
scribably soothing and agreeable. A hermit crab, with 
a beautiful shell not its own and a sea anemone clinging 
oddly to it, was scuttling along the coral sand on some 
personal mission. The bright morning sunlight — pure, 
dazzling and still soft — illumined a scene of paradisiacal 
perfection except for an excessive roar. Pure white 
sand gleamed on either side of him. It was warm to 
the touch. 

So this was death! That, more like the faint reflec¬ 
tion of a thought, like something in a mirror rather than 
the object itself, trickled through Roderic’s conscious¬ 
ness and he closed his eyes again, impatient of the op¬ 
pressive roaring in his ears. Thunder — gunfire ? On 
a sudden, without any desire of his own, he sat up. 

No, this could not be death; it was life! He felt 
the spray falling on his face, into his eyes, and he rubbed 
them languidly. He discovered that the muscles of his 
arms were aching. He endeavored to rise and he laughed 
like a person emerging from laughing gas over the aching 
painful stiffness in every part of him. His thighs and 
legs were all but immovable with pain. 

Alive! alive! he cried inwardly, with a swelling ex¬ 
ultation even as he winced under the pain, that certain 
proof and companion of human life. Stupefied, dazed. 


THE GIRL OF THE ISLAND 


75 


he sat turning his head from side to side against the 
exquisite ache of the muscles of his neck, his lips parted, 
his eyes roving, dazzled. Yes, he was alive. By the 
mysterious agency or failure of all the forces that had 
seemed to conspire his death, he had been brought forth 
alive! 

Where? That query barely flashed through his brain 
only to fall again into nothingness. For the present it 
signified less than the breeze overhead or the scuttling 
crab. 

Water! That was the only thing that signified. Thirst 
racked and burned him. Water! All else was secondary. 
Water to drink, to fill himself with as one filled a barrel. 
His parched throat, as he tried to swallow, spread pain 
downward to his lungs, sideways into his ears, into his 
very brain. Water ! 

He gazed miserably about him, every movement of his 
body costly with pain. But only the roaring surf was 
before him and the forest on each side and behind him. 
A little farther down on his right he descried the raft with 
timbers twisted out of place being pounded by the surf 
against the beach. 

The whole dread event of the shipwreck rushed back 
upon his mind and his senses reeled under the impact of 
the crowded images. The hurricane — the raft — the 
Kanaka! 

But he must have water! Again he tried to rise. One 
of his bare feet was cruelly crushed and lacerated, with 
blood and white sand clotted about it. His bare arms 
were also torn and lacerated. He passed a hand over his 
smarting left cheek and felt a scab of dried blood. 

“ Lord! ” he thought, “ Fm a ruin.” 

Nevertheless he set his teeth and braced himself to 
rise. The pains from all parts of him sent a shower of 
light-flashes to his eyes, and he felt his cheek burn as his 


76 


A NEW WORLD 


face twisted. But he achieved a standing posture, and 
leaning against the rough surface of the palm, he turned 
his back upon the surf. 

The jungle faced him! 

If only he were in possession of a stick or a crutch! 
Fumbling, he felt in a deep pocket of his brown dunga¬ 
rees that were hanging in tatters about his thighs and 
calves. Yes, his clasp knife was there. But walking 
seemed impossible. Sinking down again, he began 
slowly, painfully, to advance on his hands and knees up 
the gentle slope down which the drooping trees seamed 
to come strolling toward the sea. A wealth of chaparral, 
ferns and weeds impeded him, but these he brushed aside 
and crept on over fallen coco palms, their crumpled green 
boughs useless for support. Their trunks, he perceived, 
were hollow inside. Was all this world mocking and 
hollow inside? Some hundred feet farther up the slope 
he came upon a plantation of gnarled old trees whose long 
branches, horizontally interlacing, gave him the effect 
of giraffes twining about each other s necks. From one 
of these ton trees he cut a staff with his clasp knife, 
clogged and sticky with sea water, and achingly dragged 
himself along. Now and then a bare spot was a vast 
relief after tangles of brush and ferns and creepers, giant 
lianas and ropes of convulvulus that formed intricate bar¬ 
riers to halt his progress. He cut and slashed with his 
knife here and there and opened a pathway through which 
he crept rather than to suffer the pain of going round it. 

But where was he going, he suddenly asked himself 
in a dull bewilderment? And the thirst in his throat 
grew abruptly more consuming as he faced the blank 
answer of total ignorance. Cannibals! The word flashed 
through his brain and gave him momentary pause. 
Every South Sea traveler hears of cannibals, but seldom 


THE GIRL OF THE ISLAND 77 

meets any. The thought failed to find any anchorage in 
his consciousness. 

“ If they want me,” he reflected somberly with the 
boyish American cast of humor, “ they are welcome.” 
He did not care. He cared for nothing, excepting only 
— water! Even a cannibal would have proved welcome 
to him then. On a sudden, as he leaned against a harsh- 
ribbed coco-palm trunk towering over him, he saw a small 
green nut lying at his feet. He gazed upon it and clutched 
the smooth oval shape in his hands as though it might 
escape him. 

Tremulously he cut a slice from one end of it, held it 
to his open mouth and the tepid liquid that seemed cool 
to him drained into his hot throat. The strange, faintly 
dulcet flatness of it was like sparkling wine to his thirst¬ 
ing flesh. He stood with the empty shell clutched in 
his hands for a time, unable to take it from his mouth. 
He was fiercely intent upon draining the last drop of 
it. He panted as after deep exertion and uttered a pro¬ 
found sigh. 

Why had he not thought of it before? He could 
not say. He had tasted coconut water only once in the 
past, and the impression it had left had been a negative 
one, unpleasant. He knew sailors drank it after a night 
of alcohol. 

Swiftly, with shaking hand, he threw up the shell at 
the cluster of green nuts above in order to bring down 
more. His throw went wild. With a mighty effort he 
braced himself and threw a rough stone at the nut 
cluster of the lowest coco palm with all his strength. Two 
more green nuts, one no larger than a good-sized lemon, 
came thudding upon the soft ground. He sat down with 
his quarry in an access of rich triumph. Eagerly he 
drained the nuts, and the trickle of their flat liquid down 
his throat gave him a sensuous pleasure so great he could 


78 


A NEW WORLD 


hardly contain his joy. He uttered a shout. The blood 
seemed to course through his veins to a new rhythm. His 
brain felt clearer. He sat for a time as under a spell, 
contemplating the green shells and the white pithy circles 
where he had cut them, like a Hindu ascetic contemplating 
his own navel or the laws of the universe. Now he could 
go on. 

He rose with a new alacrity, firmly grasped his staff 
and limped on. He paused now and then, to rest, to 
listen. Intense silence alone oppressed his ears. Alone! 
He felt the deathly depression of that fact creeping into 
his heart; he was alone on some small lost island, in mid- 
Pacific! 

With diminished zest he tramped on, nevertheless. 
At a distance of perhaps a mile from the surf in a more 
or less straight line, though it had seemed like many 
leagues, he came upon a sight that for a moment flooded 
his heart with a tide of joy, completely obliterating even 
the thought of loneliness. From beneath a semicircle of 
darkened coral rocks a clear spring was bubbling and, 
amid the still loud but now intermittent boom of the surf, 
he could hear the blessed sound of the water as it went 
purling downward in the direction he had been walking. 
This was the watershed evidently, the highest part of 
the island. 

A grove of banana trees stood guarding the spring like 
so many easy-going sentinels drowsing at their posts. 
Giant vegetables rather than trees in appearance, these 
plants, with their broad leaves hanging downward in 
flaps on either side of the midriff, their lazy droop and 
light lustrous green, seemed to embody the very spirit 
of the tropics, eternal languorous ease. 

Roderic sank down on his hands and knees, bowed 
like an oriental worshipper at a shrine, and drank deep 


THE GIRL OF THE ISLAND 79 

from the crystal-clear water, raised his head upward like 
a fowl and drank again. 

“ The fountain of life,” he said to himself. ‘‘ In any 
case one need not fear to die here.” Plans of vigil, sangu¬ 
ine hopes of being taken off by some passing ship, warm 
visions of being carried home to Boston — Adams 
Rock — began to form in his reviving brain; he sat down 
among the green, maizelike banana stems. A little golden 
lizard hurried by him in a fright. The huge dark-fingered 
leaves of breadfruit trees rustled faintly high overhead, 
and below him a giant bougainvillea creeper hid the view. 
Aerial orchids were clinging to branches here and there. 
Beauty was all about in endless coloring, a dozen varieties 
of perfume mingled into one delicious fragrance, but no 
sound of human life. If only his wounded feet permitted 
him to climb the breadfruit tree or the coconut stems, he 
might at this point learn as much as from the weary ex¬ 
ploration of the entire island. But tree climbing was 
impossible for him now. 

He rose up refreshed but with a body clamorous and 
shaking for want of food, and turned his face toward 
the bougainvillea arcade, down the rivulet from the spring. 
On a sudden he was startled so violently that he paused 
in his tracks. He noted beneath his feet, a distinctly 
marked path. A path in his own familiar woods, near 
home, meant nothing. Here it meant a tremendous cer¬ 
tainty. Animals or human beings, or both, had either 
been here or were here now. He listened as though ex¬ 
pecting to hear footsteps. The same eternal silence of 
nature, composed of rustling leaves, purling water, and 
the distant boom of the surf, alone reached his straining 
ear drums. 

Ravenous hunger suddenly gripped his interior like 
a thing with tentacles. He laughed aloud. Fool! With 
the reflex response of an animal he turned toward the 


80 


A NEW WORLD 


banana grove, scanned the plants for the ripest fruit, and 
gripping in one hand the leonine tail that hangs from 
every cluster, and with the other hand his hardwood staff, 
he struck and struck at the point where the stem of the 
cluster joins the main plant until the bunch came tumbling 
down and he with it. 

He grinned to himself ruefully as his thigh struck 
a dry and fallen tree trunk. But heedless of pain, like 
some savage ancestor of his own, he fell voraciously upon 
the food and gorged like an animal. The smoothness, 
the creamy flesh, the tantalizing smell of the fruit! It 
was delicious fare, though dry, and he crawled to the 
spring for great draughts of water two or three times 
as he ate. He actually felt his middle swelling and dis¬ 
tending, and with satiety came the tardy prompting to 
stop. Now he must go on about his exploration. But 
that was not so easy. A heaviness, a drowsiness, of all 
the senses, crept over him. Better rest a moment. More 
and more heavy grew his limbs and his eyelids kept falling 
as though weights were pulling them downward. He 
leaned upon one elbow — he sank his hand upon his 
arm — his limbs relaxed — he was asleep. 

If he had any other dreams in that heavy sleep, he 
could not remember. Only the Alice, with her slightly 
rakish masts, her birdlike white sails and a smart dash 
of spray over her bows, — that was inimitably real. 
The girl Allene Galbraith was somewhere near and he 
thought old Carmichael had purposely made the ship 
lurch to show passengers what ships were for. He 
turned sharply to catch the malicious glint in old Car¬ 
michael’s eye, and his own eyes unwillingly opened and 
he knew he was dreaming still. 

For a girl was kneeling over him and peering into his 
face, a girl with puzzled questioning eyes, clear and star- 
like with wonder, with av/e, — Allene Galbraith! 


THE GIRL OF THE ISLAND 


81 


He closed his eyes, opened them again more easily 
and with a startled wakening consciousness moved his 
hand to brush away the phantom girl as one brushes 
away to fly. His hand encountered the bare forearm of 
the girl. It was smooth and warm. 

He sat up slowly, unsteadily, with terrible eyes, his 
face within an inch of hers, her warm breath on his 
cheeks. 

“ You are better now,” she uttered in a clear young 
voice, the well-remembered voice, with a note of some¬ 
thing kindly, something solicitous. Oh, it was a dream 
assuredly! 

“ Crazy — dream,” he began muttering, and the girl 
laughed softly. 

Oh, no! ” she protested, with a gentle laugh. “ This 
is no dream — I am quite real.” 

“ How — did you get here? ” he breathed with a fear¬ 
ful, staring bewilderment, as a man might address a 
ghost. 

“ How did you get here ? ” she demanded, with a note 
of concern that sent a thrill through him; and he made 
as if to touch her hand, but let his own fall again. 

“ Cast ashore — on the reef — in the raft — ” he 
spoke in brief, gasping bursts, without framing words, 
his eyes holding hers as if in fear lest they and she 
might at any moment dissolve into air. “ The Alice 
was wrecked,” he added. Hurricane yesterday — no, 
before yesterday — I don’t remember the day.” At the 
words “ wrecked yesterday,” the girl was shaken as by 
the shock of pain and she covered her eyes with her 
hands. 

“ The Alice wrecked — Oh, heavens! — Oh, poor Cap¬ 
tain Flitch! ” she cried with a sob of horror. And 
his ship — she was named after his daughter — his poor 
family! ” 


82 


A NEW WORLD 


** It hit us off the Paumotus,” he added irrelevantly. 

“ Are — the others — any of the others — ’’ she began 
in a whisper, and her face was aghast, horror-struck. 

It was at that moment that he realized for the first 
time how deep may be emotion on the score of others. 

“ I don’t know,” he answered slowly, since she did not 
finish. “ One of the Kanakas and I were on the raft. 
He was lost — off the reef — a shark.” 

“ The reef! ” she repeated mechanically and with a 
convulsive little shudder she leaped to her feet. Her 
glance had fallen upon his wounded leg. 

“ You are hurt,” she cried, with a solicitude that broke 
upon his consciousness like a burst of sunrise. Let me 
wash — or,” she paused for a moment’s reflection. “ Do 
you think you could walk down the hill? Those coral 
cuts — coral sometimes infects wounds. There are medi¬ 
cines at th:; house. Do you feel strong enough to walk? ” 

‘‘ Oh, yes,” he smiled faintly into her eyes. “ I can 
walk — I walked up here from down below — and I 
have eaten-” he pointed at the remnant of the ban¬ 

anas. He rose to his feet. But a griping pain seized 
him in the abdomen. His face contorted. And writh¬ 
ing, he sank to the ground. 

“Oh, dear!” she faltered with perturbed indecision. 
“ I hate to leave you alone here, but I’d better get down 
and bring help — to carry you.” 

To be twisted with pain seemed to him then, for some 
reason, in the highest degree shameful. A flush of heat 
came to his face. 

“ No — I can walk,” he said with decision and rose 
to his feet, this time more carefully. “ Must have eaten 
too many of those,” he glanced with disgusted contrition 
at the bananas. They were heaping disgrace upon him. 

“ You were starving,” she murmured pityingly. “ Are 
you sure you can walk? ” 




THE GIRL OF THE ISLAND 


83 


“ Oh, yes,” he cried jauntily, stifling further indica¬ 
tions of pain. 

“ It’s less than a mile,” she cheered him. “ Do you 
think,” she smiled, with a soft flush creeping up her 
cheeks, “you’d better lean — on my arm?” 

Carefully, with no more pressure than the weight of 
a butterfly might cause, he laid the fingers of his left 
hand upon her arm below the elbow, leaning heavily 
with his free hand upon his stick. The soft flesh of her 
arm sent a thrill up his fingers. 

Fatigue, exhaustion, seemed to have fallen away from 
him magically as they proceeded slowly downward along 
the brook. Internal and external pains went alike un¬ 
heeded. A roar of exultation leaped in his impoverished 
blood, pounding in his eardrums. He did not exult at 
being saved, at his marvelous escape. He was not amazed 
at the strange accident that brought him to the Galbraiths’ 
island. Those things were for later wonder. But with 
the triumphant egotism of youth he was telling himself 
— or some one, a masterful eager being within, was in¬ 
sistently telling him — that he had desired, willed above 
all things, to see this girl again, and infallibly, despite 
all obstacles, he had accomplished his desire! He 
laughed aloud in the irrepressible burst of his tri¬ 
umph. 

“ God! This is strange,” he murmured easily, to 
cover his laugh. “ I thought this place was uninhabited.” 

She also laughed. Her laugh sounded startled, as 
though he had broken in upon her thoughts. What was 
she thinking of all this time? He shot a sidelong glance 
at her. A starriness in her eyes, a preternatural bril¬ 
liance, shone marvelously. 

“Be careful,” she warned; “there’s a jagged stone 
here.” 

Once past the bougainvillea tangle and out of a grove 


84 


A NEW WORLD 


of dark shadowed breadfruit trees, the unknown side 
of the island became clear and visible. The trees became 
more sparse. A banyan tree in patriarchal luxury re¬ 
clined with its family of trunks spread out, supported by 
a palisade of its own stilts; a few pandanus trees with 
their daggerlike leaves seemed to move spirally in the 
breeze and the ubiquitous palms bunched their glistening 
leaves to leeward. Clear spaces, lustrous bits of glade lay 
carpetlike between the boles, and few fallen trunks were 
visible here. 

A brake of sugar cane waved gently to the left and a 
considerable garden land lay stretching on both sides of 
the stream. And above all there were houses, — real 
houses that gave the castaway’s heart a sharp throb. 
Strictly speaking, there was only one house, gleaming 
white in the sun with a broad veranda, lifted from the 
ground on stakes, and some thatched sheds beyond it. 
On the right of the stream that was now perceptibly 
broader were perhaps eight or nine thatched huts, a 
copra-shed with a corrugated zinc roof nearer the beach, 
and a smaller shed similarly roofed. And beyond it all 
lay the mirror of a lagoon, of a blue so pure and deep 
it seemed to be sending up a perpetual hail of adoration 
to the heavens that gave it its color. Beyond the lagoon, 
except for a narrow break, the white surf kept foaming 
and thundering in a line curving gently to right and to 
left. That was the living end of the island. The vast 
unpeopled sea lay stretching out beyond. 

“ Does your foot hurt — much? ” the girl asked Rod- 
eric after a silence, as his eyes swept the scene before 
him. 

“No — not very much,” he replied, whereupon she 
insisted that he sit down and rest. He complied readily, 
for now he became abruptly anxious not to come upon 
those habitations below too soon. The girl sank down 


THE GIRL OF THE ISLAND 


85 


on the grass near him, beside a flaunting hibiscus bush 
with its flaming black-tongued flowers. For no reason 
at all, these scarlet flowers shot like an arrow into his 
brain a fleeting picture of Myrtle Thornley. He frowned 
at the memory. 

“ Do ships ever call here? ” he broke the silence by in¬ 
quiring, again wholly in ignorance of his motive. 

“ Oh,” she laughed, “ don’t be worried by that. Father 
will manage to get you away somehow. But you must 
get well.” 

“ Oh, Fm in no hurry,” he blurted out quickly and in- 
w^ardly called himself a fool and a churl. 

“ It’s not that,” he stammered. “ But a shipwrecked 
sailor can’t be much use here — and he’s got to be fed, 
I suppose, until you get rid of him.” 

“ We’ve never had one here before that I know of,” 
she answered brightly. “ And we have lots of food.” 

One remembers oddly trivial things as Roderic long 
remembered this first exchange of words between them 
on the island, because for him it possessed at the mo¬ 
ment an immense significance. The soul within him, 
against the background of the amazing present, against 
the past tragedy that led to his appearance here, longed 
to declare its chivalry and fineness to this girl who had 
been figuring in his dreams. But stammering words 
were still all he could command. The girl beside him 
impressed him curiously. At one moment she was a 
mere young thing, light and fragile, scarcely the person 
to be rescuing a castaway, the girl of the Alice. The 
next instant she seemed of towering importance with an 
aura of sheltering personality about her, with radiance 
and power, a Nausicaa who could command all the re¬ 
sources and hospitality of this little world. She seemed 
on a sudden infinitely less familiar than in his vision of 
her and he felt himself humbled and overawed. 


86 


A NEW WORLD 


I think I can go on all right now,” he murmured 
and rose to his feet. With a grave serenity the girl also 
rose and they proceeded again, this time without the 
aid of her arm. From time to time in their slow progress 
her white forehead puckered as she gazed toward the 
settlement, as if seeking some one in the distance or con¬ 
juring away untoward omens. 

The intense light of the cleared spaces was pouring 
all about them, and the purity and beauty of the scene, 
of the clear heavens and the flashing sea and the invio¬ 
late verdure, made him strangely reluctant to approach 
any nearer to the place of habitations. There came drift¬ 
ing to his nostrils faintly a peculiar smell from the direc¬ 
tion of the shining lagoon, an odor haunting and faintly 
acrid, the odor of South Sea beaches and reefs, the odor 
of decay. 

Oddly enough that slight unrelated sensation gave him 
a sudden access of courage. After all, this was no fan¬ 
tasy, no old tale of an ogre’s castle. It was an ordinary 
Pacific island and those boats in the middle of the lagoon 
were manned by ordinary shouting natives under the 
rule of a white man. His confidence returned. He 
withdrew his eyes from the grayish-white verandah’d 
house that kept obtruding itself hynotically on his gaze. 

“ Well, anyway,” he said abruptly, as though at the 
end of an argument, ‘‘ I can work for your father until 
— until I leave. I ought to be able to earn my salt.” 

The girl at his side stared at him with wide-eyed in¬ 
credulity and something like a cloud settled on her 
countenance. 

Do you think,” she demanded, “ we are such heathens 
as that? Do you think so badly of us — that we can’t 
do anything for a shipwrecked sailor without — with¬ 
out -” and she turned away quickly. 



THE GIRL OF THE ISLAND 


87 


Abashed now, he searched her averted face. Tears 
were gleaming in her eyes. He halted. 

I am awfully sorry,’’ he stammered in contrite con¬ 
fusion. But — put yourself in my place. I didn’t 
exactly come here by invitation. I don’t say your 
father will throw me into the sea — even the hurricane 
didn’t quite succeed in doing that. But wouldn’t he have 
a right to feel — annoyed — having a man land on him 
like this?” 

She laughed now and that cheered him like wine. 

“ Let us say no more about it,” she commanded 
gently. You have survived the hurricane and a ship¬ 
wreck. That ought to be quite enough for you just now.” 

I guess you are right,” he answered eagerly, anxious 
to appease her. “ I’m sorry I said that. Let’s go on.” 
And his confidence returned with a rush and he stepped 
out more lightly. 

The events that led him and brought him hither, the 
accidents and fatalities, the girl walking beside him, 
destiny itself seemed suddenly to fall into their sub¬ 
ordinate places as merely the thralls and servants of his 
potent inner desires, of his dreams. In a flash of a kind 
of premonitory clairvoyance he seemed to be in the 
midst of a life experience on this island, strange yet in¬ 
imitably familiar, — life, with its doubts, storms, 
troubles, yet with a sure conviction of ultimate triumph. 
He smiled wryly at himself. Was he still dreaming? 

Nevertheless he felt within him a freshet of new con¬ 
fidence to meet old Galbraith. Why should he fear or 
hesitate? Old Galbraith himself was but the servant and 
instrument of his imperious destiny, that outfaced and 
outmarshalled accidents, hurricanes, shipwrecks. Yes, 
he could meet him. Unconsciously his lungs expanded, 
his head rose higher, his nostrils dilated. For one in- 


88 A NEW WORLD 

stant he saw the irresistible indomitable Dream and 
himself as one. 

A brown girl, wearing a single garment of chequered 
calico, with bare feet and bare arms, came running toward 
them and spoke excitedly to Allene in the native tongue 
for an instant. Allene answered her briefly and the 
brown legs went dashing back to the veranda’d house. 

The stilts, he now saw as he approached the dwelling, 
were the tall rough-hewn columns that supported the 
broad veranda, completely surrounding the four-square 
house, set within a couple of hundred yards of the lagoon. 
A few fruit trees stood about like sentinels left after the 
skirmish of clearing, to bring shade and shelter, and the 
gray-white roof of corrugated metal lay gleaming and 
reflecting back the sunlight. An intense stillness, like 
a property of the air, surrounded the house. 

A brown woman, elderly and portly, with mild liquid 
eyes, clad in the single native garment like a wrapper, 
starchy with cleanliness, was standing at the foot of 
the stair leading to the veranda and the living quarters 
and she smiled broadly. With a flow of speech in her 
native tongue she bobbed and laughed and smiled again, 
put her great arm round Roderic’s shoulder and all but 
carried him up the steps, across the veranda, through the 
matted tafa-colored hall, low-ceiled, broad, but little en¬ 
cumbered with furnishings, and into a sweet-smelling 
room with flowers upon a low table and a bed dazzling 
white. 

Before he knew it she had stripped him of his torn, 
sticky, salt-rimed garments, had thrown a gray dress¬ 
ing gown about him and was bathing his wounds and 
lacerations with cool soothing waters. With a gesture 
she bade him relax upon the bed. He was abashed before 
this natural woman who took such liberties with his 
person. Fitful little flashes of shame alternated with 


THE GIRL OF THE ISLAND 


89 


gusts of the confident gratitude of a tired child that is 
being put to bed by nurse or mother. In the revulsion 
of feeling after his long stretch of drawn-out suffering 
and intense exhaustion, Roderic experienced a subtle 
contentment, a rush of roof-tree happiness, of repose, 
infinitely grateful to every cell in his body. He closed 
his eyes for an instant and then as he opened them, again 
he saw Allene Galbraith in her cool white frock, standing 
in the doorway, smiling, with the expression of greeting 
on her lips, giving him oddly the effect of a vision, of a 
far-off myth or fairy tale, when immortals appeared to 
mortal men at critical moments. 

You will be all right now,” she murmured sooth¬ 
ingly, “ now that Akura has the care of you. She knows 
how to make sick people well.” 

Her speech broke the spell of silence and by a sudden 
transference of his emotions, all his gratitude toward 
Fate and the immortal gods poured about this human 
girl and irradiated her as a burst of light irradiates a 
dazzling cloud. 

Oh, she’s fine,” he blurted out eagerly. “But it’s 
you — you are doing all this — for me — and I don’t 

deserve it-” his past rudeness to her came back to 

him for an instant, dark, confused and shadowy. “ On 

the ship I spoke to you like a-I behaved abominably,” 

he summarized with a weary sadness. “ And yet you’ve 

done all this — I hope you can forgive me. I’ll-” his 

voice was for a moment uncertain—“I’ll never forget 
this to my last minute,” he ended huskily, looking down¬ 
ward. 

An expression of vaguely startled surprise upon her 
face gave way swiftly to a sweep of brightness, a warm 
caressing kindness that seemed like a hidden quality of 
life, appearing at only rare intervals on earth, that can 
make the faces of some women more beautiful than 





90 


A NEW WORLD 


any art has yet captured the secret of, and impulsively 
she aproached the low bed where he rested. 

“You mustn’t feel that way about—‘me,’ ” she had 
been going to say, but changed it to “ us,” girl-like. 
“ We are only doing what anybody else would do in 
our place. You mustn’t bother to thank us — only rest 
and get well — even before you talk. Don’t let anybody 
make you talk now. Here is Akura, with some coco¬ 
nut milk,” as the brown woman reentered the room, chat¬ 
tering softly. “ She says your lacerations from the coral 
are quite bad and need great care. Please, just feel at 
home — and don’t worry. That’s one thing we don’t al¬ 
low on this island,” she added with a laugh — “ worry. 
The climate won’t stand it.” 

He laughed also. “ Your father ” — he began. He 
hardly knew what he was going to say. But the thought 
of her father, the testy old man whom he remembered 
so vividly, was the one oppressive background to what 
thus far had proved an unclouded paradise. But she 
interrupted him so readily that he knew instinctively 
her mind also was not devoid of some thought of the old 
man. 

“-Oh, father will be very glad,” she broke in 

hastily. “ He was a sailor himself — and father is very 
generous,” she added as though herself feeling the need 
of a deeper assurance. 

“ Good-by,” she murmured gently as Akura put the 
bowl of coconut milk on the low table beside the bed. 
“ Akura understands everything you say, so if there is 

anything you want-” and she nodded to him with a 

warm, a gracious intimacy that drew his heart with a 
sudden bound towards her, as only spontaneous kind¬ 
ness can draw a human heart long adrift and menaced. 

With a quick unthinking impulse his hand flew out as 
though to take hers, hesitated for an instant, then fell 




THE GIRL OF THE ISLAND 


91 


back upon the white bed covering. She flushed con¬ 
sciously, glanced downward into his eyes and hurried 
away, murmuring something about Akura. 

At the same moment, outside the door in the hall, 
he could hear old Galbraith’s voice booming and calling 
for Allene. 

Plainly I see even now the Roderic Whitford of that 
day lying back among the sheets, listening intently, 
though all his members were wondrously relaxed, listen¬ 
ing to Galbraith’s voice and hearing it suddenly lowered 
as though in response to signs from his daughter. A flush 
came to his cheeks at the instinctive conviction that to the 
old man he was bitterly unwelcome. But there he was, he 
kept telling himself wearily, after shipwreck and hazard 
and suffering. He took the bowl of milk, drained it al¬ 
most at a gulp and sank back, closing his eyes once more 
feeling himself swept by a current of circumstances 
too mysterious and potent to be resented. The uncer¬ 
tainty of the future assumed a kind of playful jocund 
absurdity in his relaxing brain. Who could guide the 
future in the light of the past? 

As to old Galbraith’s daughter, she was — apart — and 

forever — and he sighed profoundly.- He was at 

rest. 



CHAPTER IX 


THE SUPERFLUOUS MAN 

For two days Roderic lay tended and pampered, 
bathed and anointed, fed with an opulent yet simple diet 
of fish and fowl, with wondrous dishes compounded of 
the island fruits and vegetables, for which he discovered 
in himself a shameful capacity. Akura kept coming and 
going with the softness of a maternal nurse and Allene 
Galbraith looked in now and then, at intervals disap¬ 
pointingly infrequent, and only when Akura was in the 
room. 

With returning strength his immediate future pre¬ 
occupied him at times as a part of the languid drifting 
speculations of a man regaining his bodily vigor, but 
he tended less and less to brood upon the matter. The 
future must shape itself as best it could. 

Only once did Old Galbraith enter his room. It was 
on the morning after his arrival. Akura was gliding 
noiselessly about when Galbraith, looking eight feet tall 
and magisterial in white drill, strode in, stood in the 
middle of the apartment without speaking for a space, 
as though composing his sharpened features to a par¬ 
ticular desired pitch of severity, and then approached the 
bed rigidly. Rodericks muscles instinctively tautened. 
In the light of the angry though supressed outburst he 
had heard in the hall the day before, his expectations were 
wearily depressing. 

“ Aye, young man,” began Galbraith with a sharp 


THE SUPERFLUOUS MAN 


93 


nod, as though his head were moved by wire springs, 
“ so poor Flitch is gone and you’re saved! ” And his 
lips contracted into an expression which Roderic read 
as the bitter and contemptuous satisfaction in the cer¬ 
tainty of the topsy-turviness of Fate. Galbraith’s un¬ 
spoken thought was plainly saying: 

“ So it is, as I might have foretold, when by all the 
laws the exact opposite should have happened.” 

“ I don’t know, sir,” Roderic answered seriously but 
without shrinking from the severity of his host’s look. 
“ He might be saved. They might all be saved for all I 
know — except the Kanaka.” 

Galbraith after a moment of silence shook his head. 

“ No,” he said. “ A good sailor was Flitch but — no. 
Unlikely. Where were you bound for — the ship?” 

‘‘ San Francisco, sir.” 

‘‘ Then what the devil was Flitch doing about here ?” 
he demanded irascibly. “ Way off her course? ” 

Roderic explained that the Alice was to call at Aca¬ 
pulco first. 

Ah,” he nodded, “ that was it. Canny sailor was 
Flitch — and he is gone! ” He stood ruminating for a 
space and nervously biting his grizzled mustache. 

“ As for you,” he began, then on a sudden he checked 
himself. Fll talk to you when you get up,” he flung 
out and moved away with the staccato briskness of aged 
limbs. 

“ I can get up now, sir,” Roderic called after him. The 
old man wheeled sharply about midway to the door. 

“ You’ll stay where you are until further orders,” he 
snapped and turning again left the room. 

A flash of indignant revolt for a moment sent the 
pulses drumming in Roderic’s blood. Then he turned 
to the wall and laughed silently. 

‘‘ I don’t seem to get that old boy,” he said to him- 


94 


A NEW WORLD 


self. “ But he certainly is sorry I wasn’t drowned. I 
guess he doesn’t like me as a boarder.” 

A few minutes later Allene Galbraith entered the room 
and seemed more than usually gentle and solicitous. She 
was in something gray and clinging, of a zephyrlike fine¬ 
ness, held by a blue girdle, with a tiny spray of flowers 
drooping over the knot. She charged him above all to 
think of nothing but rest. That was all he now needed. 
He perceived this time plainly a note of anxiety, an un¬ 
accustomed harassment in her voice. But she did not 
linger. 

The next day he was determined to get up. The sen¬ 
sations that followed upon his long efforts at clinging 
to life, by now dim and nightmarish in his memory, the 
yearning for peace, the desire for rest, had mysteriously 
left his frame. The lassitude of invalidism was 
shaken off. He was not precisely charged with energy, 
but he could no longer stay upon his back. 

“ I must get up, Akura,” he informed his brown 
nurse, adding a gesture to enforce meaning. 

Akura smiled as always, her white teeth gleaming, 
came and bent over him, softly put her hand on his still 
bandaged foot, looked at the lacerations on his arms and 
nodded. She signified that she would report upon his 
case. 

Out in the hall he soon heard a low murmur of con¬ 
sultation between Akura and Allene. “ Tapena Bruce,” 
figured repeatedly in their colloquy. A moment later the 
girl came to the door of his room without approaching 
him. 

Akura says you want to get up,” she began gaily, 
“but do you really think you’d better — just yet?” 

“ Oh, yes,” eagerly. “ It’s foolish for me to be in 
bed any longer. I’m quite strong enough. Only trouble 
is,” he added shamefacedly, “ I have no clothes.” 


THE SUPERFLUOUS MAN 


95 


'Tve thought of that,” and the words cheered him 
more than anything since his first interview with old 
Galbraith. “But — if you really feel strong enough, 
Akura will bring you some of Bruce’s clothes.” 

“Bruce?” he murmured dubiously. He had believed 
the father and the daughter to be the only white people 
upon the island. 

“ Oh, you don’t know, of course,” she explained, ad¬ 
vancing nearer. “ Bruce is a sort of relation of ours. 
He’s about your size — though older, I should think. He 
lives with us. He’s away with the schooner, over at 
Papeete. We shall have to borrow some of his clothes 
for you. I’m sure,” she added, with a little pucker in 
her forehead, “ he would be only too glad to let you have 
them.” 

Why the light of the room should become somewhat 
dimmed, why something within him should dampen and 
deaden at the mention of another man living on the 
island with the Galbraiths, is one of those mysterious 
things among the tangle of emotions that ordinary mor¬ 
tals cannot yet explain. He had never seen this Bruce 
and was only just hearing his name for the first time. 
Whoever Bruce was, he was nothing more to him now 
than a name. But decidedly some of the zest in his 
spirit at the thought of rising, at the sight of Allene, for 
the first time that morning was perceptibly flattened. A 
slow smoldering flicker of resentment unaccountably 
crept into his consciousness. 

“ Oh, I — didn’t know,” he answered dully. “I wish 
there were some other way I could get clothes — but I 
don’t know how.” 

“ Don’t let that bother you in the least,” the girl spoke 
briskly, scanning his face; and hastily turning away, she 
added over his shoulder, “ Akura will bring you some 



96 


A NEW WORXD 


at once. We don’t need much here,” and she laughed, 
a shade loudly for her. 

An intuitive glimpse of knowledge that she vaguely 
understood what was passing in his mind brought a throb 
of cheer. To have his scruples, his mind, understood by 
a fellow creature, was what the exile in him was hungrily 
craving. To be understood by Allene was the desire 
he secretly cherished just then above all things. 

The clothes of the mysterious Bruce consisted of a 
singlet, a striped shirt with a rolling collar and a pair of 
coarse duck trousers somewhat small for him, but he 
clad himself in them with eagerness. No shoes were 
given him, but when he pointed inquiringly at his bare 
feet, Akura brought him a pair of sandals of cane, not 
unlike the Japanese, with a thong passing between the 
big and second toes, with soles of shark’s skin. Once 
dressed, he incontinently fled his room as though it were 
a prison, passed into the hall and looked exploringly 
about him. 

The personality of the room dawned upon him slowly. 
It gave him an effect of richness by its very scantiness 
of furnishing. At home he would have called it a barn 
of a place. Yet here the dimness, the dark waxed floor, 
scattered with native-woven mats, the odd mixture of 
small bits of English work, Adam and Sheraton, little 
tables, two or three chairs, a small French cabinet or 
two, v/ere interspersed like precious curios among the 
roughly made chairs and one large dark-wood table of 
seemingly local craftsmanship. A French sofa in flowered 
and gilt damask was evidently the most prized of the 
possessions. One or two portraits hung upon the dark 
walls and that was the “ hall.” Homes in this region 
had not heretofore been open to him. This was the first 
island home he had ever really seen. 

A picture of his father’s living room suddenly came 


THE SUPERFLUOUS MAN 


97 


before him, — the living- room with its co2liness, its 
abundance of harmonious furniture, its fulness of 
‘‘ things,” so that in parts of it you could not pass with¬ 
out brushing or rubbing against something. And oddly 
enough it was the home environment that now seemed 
the foreign one. This large airiness, this spacious empti¬ 
ness, seemed the natural setting of a home. 

Still alone, he passed through one of the doors to 
the veranda and walked slowly round to the side facing 
the lagoon which he had not yet in reality seen. A 
colonnade of palm trees stretched down toward the water, 
planted in perfect symmetry, and a path of coral slabs 
between the trees made a gleaming white ribbon run¬ 
ning between those columnar tree trunks. Their foliage 
rustled gently in the breeze and the sunlight poured down 
from a cobalt sky that dazzled and overpowered the eye 
so that he blinked owlishly as he stared. He sank down 
on a cane settle facing seaward. 

Down by the lagoon he saw old Galbraith in white 
with a pith helmet giving orders to some nearly nude na¬ 
tive men who were busy with shovels and barrows and 
in the middle of the lagoon a single diver’s boat was busy 
at its quest for shell. A gentle breeze was blowing in¬ 
shore from across the reef. The faint odor of decay, not 
wholly disagreeable, came drifting to his nostrils. The 
blue Pacific beyond lay stretching endlessly. Not a 
cloud, not a sail anywhere and scarcely a ripple except 
for the surf outside the reef. A little cosmos, the world 
forgetting and of the world virtually unknown. A 
vacillation came abruptly to his mind. As though some 
one were asking him to make a choice, Roderic began 
to weigh the outside, the world he had come from, 
against this before him. It was beautiful, magical, but 
was it life? 


98 


A NEW WORLD 


As though in answer to his query Allene Galbraith 
stood suddenly beside him. 

“ Oh, here is the invalid! ” she exclaimed gaily. 

What a splendidly quick recovery — Mr. Whitford. 
Akura is a good nurse, isn’t she? She brought me up 
after — my mother died,” and she seated herself at the 
other end of the settle. 

The girl’s voice fell with singular music upon his ear. 
He could not reply for a moment, so delightful was the 
surprise of her voice and speech as it intervened in his 
idle speculation. 

“ Then she made a very good job of it,” he finally 
answered. “ She deserves a medal for me — so why not 
a statue for you? ” 

Her gay laughter was delicious to his hungry senses. 
For the first time on the island he was feeling normal, 
himself. 

I’ll have to mention it to father,” she said. But 
we have no sculptor here. Perhaps you are a sculptor? ” 

“ No,” he shook his head. “ Nothing so useful. I am 
a sailor — that’s about all.” 

She looked at him for a moment with puzzling inquiry, 
then gazed away at the beach and the Pacific beyond. 

“ How did you come on poor Captain Flitch’s ship? ” 
she demanded, suddenly serious. “ You might as well 
tell me now, if you feel like it. There’s nothing to do 
this morning.” 

For fully a minute he hesitated. His story, — could 
he tell it to her ? Perhaps — with reservations. Then 
quite simply and frankly he gave her an outline narra¬ 
tive of his going to sea (omitting in his youthful self- 
consciousness all mention of Myrtle Thornley) of his 
decision to ship in a steamer homeward bound and yet 
of his sudden change to Flitch’s vessel, bringing up to 



THE SUPERFLUOUS MAN 99 

the hurricane, of which he found it difficult to speak 
freely. 

But why,’' she broke in, “ didn’t you go on the 
steamer? You might have been safely home by now.” 
He held her eyes for a moment and then turned his 
own away. 

“ I wanted-” he explained, “ I wanted to see — 

Papeete again.” 

When he turned toward her she was looking down¬ 
ward into her lap, playing with her fingers. She did 
not look up. “ I see,” she murmured gravely. “ That 
was — what do they call it — kismet — Fate.” 

“ Do you like living here on the island? ” he suddenly 
asked her. 

Oh, I! ” she jumped up lightly. “ What do I mat¬ 
ter. This is home to me. I am happy anywhere. Father 
decides everything for me.” 

“ I should have thought you would decide a good deal 
for yourself,” he told her. 

“ There comes father now,” she answered irrelevantly. 

He’ll be glad to see you about. Do, please, I ask 
you,” she added hurriedly, like a warning, “ let him think 
that he is deciding everything for you too — that you 
are — well — that’s a little way of his.” 

And in spite of the enigmatic tone of her words. Rod- 
eric felt a flash of surprise to hear this girl in her in¬ 
nocence speak with so much guile. Young as she was, 
she knew her world. 

She left him then, with a nod, and his gaze turned 
moodily toward the beach, where it rested upon the old 
man walking with a stiff and rigid energy, like a jointed 
mechanism, up to the coral path between the palms. As 
by an effort he seemed to carry his head defiantly high, 
so that the white helmet, tilting backwards, gave its 
wearer an appearance almost rakishly haughty. 



100 


A NEW WORLD 


Proud! ” thought Roderic with a shadowy smile. 
The old boy was undoubtedly proud of the little world 
he had built up in this solitude, reclaimed as it were 
from the engulfing ocean, ruling here to all appearances 
like a monarch. But what is this tiny island, he reflected, 
against the vast world beyond, that neither knows nor 
cares a jot about its very existence? Then the young 
man in his moody solitude had a flash of intuition that 
later in years came back to him with greater clarity and 
force: Every man on earth is busy and violently intent 
upon building up a small domain where he is chief and 
monarch, that he clings to and holds against the rest 
of humanity. And collectively those tiny fiefs wrung out 
of the encompassing stress of life make up the World, 

‘‘ Well,” he thought, as i^ld Galbraith drew nearer, 
“ I could make more of it than he has done. I could 
put more life in the place, more than he has left in his 
old bones. But what’s the use? I suppose he’s coming 
to tell me how he’s going to ship me away. I don’t care. 
I’ll be glad. But that girl!- Think of her remain¬ 

ing alone in this place without a soul — I wonder,” his 
thought suddenly jumped, “ who this fellow Bruce may 
be?” He heard the sound of the old man’s feet upon 
the lower steps leading to the veranda and he sat up 
expectant. 

“ Well, my fine fellow,” crackled the old man, “ so 
you’re up and about! And who gave you leave to come 
out? ” Roderic laughed at this absurdly magisterial form 
of speech and decided to take it humorously. 

“ My nurses, sir,” he answered pleasantly. ‘‘ They 
aided and abetted me — lent me these clothes.” 

“Well, I am dashed!” exclaimed Galbraith without a 
shadow of humor. “ Gave you Bruce’s clothes without 
a word to me — how dared they ? How dared they ? 
Eh?” 



THE SUPERFLUOUS MAN 


101 


Roderic could not enlighten him; but he experienced 
a fleeting wish that he could throw them in his face. Yet 
there was a dignity about the old man — and after all, 
was not this his world? 

“ I am sorry, sir,” he murmured. “ But what could 
they do? I had no clothes of my own. I’ll pay for them 
sometime when-” 

“ Damn your pay,” spluttered the old man. “ Sit down 
there,” he thundered, for Roderic had risen. “ Now 
the question is, what am I going to do with you? ” and 
he paused as though waiting for an answer. Roderic’s^ 
dumb stare did not enlighten him. 

‘‘ You came just too late for the schooner,” he glow¬ 
ered testily. “ Bruce left for Papeete the morning you 
got here. Could have shipped you off handily. Why 
the devil didn’t you get here a day sooner?” 

This was irresistible to Roderic and he exploded with 
stifled laughter. The old man spoke as though the casta¬ 
way might have arrived by any one of innumerable 
trains and wilfully chose the latest one. Galbraith glared 
irascibly at him, without so much as a smile. 

“ The dashed hurricane,” he muttered musingly. 

Well, young man, I’m hanged if I’ll send the schooner 
to Papeete especially for your sake when she gets back! ” 
Don’t ships ever call here? ” murmured Roderic with 
uneasy wonder. 

“Ships? No!” thundered Galbraith. “Once in 
years Levy may call in here to look for — no! ” he in¬ 
terrupted himself. “ No ships. Don’t want ships nosing 
about here. This is no place for ships. My schooner 
goes every six months or so to Papeete. What am I 
to do with you ? Keep you here six months ? ” he added 
with obviously bitter repugnance at the thought. 

This was more than Roderic could bear. A sudden 
revulsion of anger shook his frame, whether begotten 



102 


A NEW WORLD 


by the anger of Galbraith or born of the first opportunity 
for real resentment against something senseless and buf¬ 
feting that was neither wind nor sea, but human. 

“ Why not throw me into the lagoon,” he flashed out, 
“or out there the other side of the reef? That shark 
may still be outside-” 

“ Silence! ” cried Galbraith in goaded amazement. 
“You talk to me like that, after — after — you talk to 

me-” further speech choked him so he quivered from 

head to foot. 

After all that nursing and kindness Galbraith was go¬ 
ing to say. Yet he did not say it. That glimpse of 
something— something fine in the old man’s character, 
despite his quivering temper, shot through Roderic like 
a current. 

“ I am sorry, sir. I forgot myself.” He spoke out 
clearly and calmly. “ But you see, Mr. Galbraith, I didn’t 
ask to come here. It happened like that. I know I’m no 
good to you. I’ll do whatever you say.” 

With his hands clasped behind and his fingers work¬ 
ing agitatedly, Galbraith fell to pacing the veranda back 
and forth, as though no one else were there, as though he 
and his hot thoughts were alone. 

“ Is there nothing I can do — to earn my keep? ” Rod¬ 
eric suddenly asked in a low tone. 

“ Do! ” the old man wheeled about. “Who wants 
your doing? What can you do that a Kanaka can’t do 
ten times better? Do! Don’t want white labor here. No 
place for beach combers! ” 

Once again the wave of anger heaved in Roderic’s 
bosom but this time he checked it sharply. Sternly he 
refused to fall into offending his host and the father of 
Allene, who had been a very angel for kindness. 

“ No, sir, I know,” he spoke quietly. “ But here I am 
— by accident — until I get off the island.” 




THE SUPERFLUOUS MAN 103 

“Yes — until,” the old man muttered bitterly-- 

“until! ” 

“When may I go to work, sir?” Roderic went on 
with persistence. 

Galbraith looked at him fixedly for a moment, then 
turned toward the door leading to the hall. 

“ Come down to those sheds on the beach to-morrow 
morning,” he threw out sharply over his shoulder, and 
helmeted head inclining forward, he disappeared indoors. 

And again, for no reason that he could precisely de¬ 
fine, Roderic experienced a surge of triumph in his 
breast, in his very bones. Fortune and accident and 
blindest chance had ruled every one of his actions, had 
carried him, swept him and cast him hither like the veriest 
drifting wood or fragment of flotsam. 

But a faint yet irresistibly certain gleam in his heart, in 
the nethermost roots of his being, was telling him that 
his own will had carried, managed and contrived his ac¬ 
tions. He was startled to feel with appalling certainty 
that every event, how bizarre and strange soever in its 
falling out, was the accurate shadow of an imperious de¬ 
cisive entity, of a guide and leader in the ultimate depths 
of his own soul. 



CHAPTER X 


THE STONE BY THE POOL 

A blazing noonday sun was pouring down upon the 
beach from a cloudless sky of such intense blue that it 
had the effect of changing the human conception of fire. 
Fire, abstract fire, which is commonly fixed in men’s ideas 
as red; seemed undoubtedly blue. A gentle inshore 
breeze, that came sighing across the lagoon from the 
ocean beyond the reef, alone made any work possible for 
Roderic, child of cool mists, reared amidst five months 
of snow annually and days and weeks of leaden skies. 

Roderic was working. With his eyeballs aching from 
the glare and the intense contraction of his pupils under 
the broad brim of his shapeless, flapping, pandanus-fiber 
hat, he was shifting deal boxes from the shed that was 
the store, in anticipation of Bruce’s return from Papeete 
with the forty-ton schooner. The new store of provisions 
was to take the place of those crates and boxes, some 
of which, containing small remnants of their stock, he 
emptied upon the shelves and narrow counter. From the 
dimness of the shed he carried the crates out into the 
glare and thought he actually felt his pupils contracting 
to pins’ points. The sweat was running in streams down 
his back and into his eyes, which he kept wiping with 
his bare brown arm. He glanced out toward the lagoon 
at the two divers’ boats and envied the great-chested 
divers their repeated submergence under the incredibly 
azure surface of the mirrorlike expanse. The shouts 


THE STONE BY THE POOL 


105 


and voices of their brown helpers in the boats sounded 
childishly cheerful and happy under the coppery heat. 

“ Working ” — said Roderic somberly to himself, 
“ working for what? For a little food at the hands of 
an angry-livered old man who has made himself virtual 
ruler of this dot of land in the vast spaces of the globe.'’ 

The intolerable burden of labor without hope, which 
is the cause of so much stress upon the earth, came home 
to him that day more sharply than ever during the preced¬ 
ing weeks since his recovery; than, indeed, ever before. 

So revolting was the thought that instantly his mind 
set to work of itself mitigating his lot. He was working, 
his mind informed him, for the passage to Papeete and 
home at the end of another five months or so. It was 
an interlude, an enforced interval incidental to his 

peculiar place in life, incidental to- But, no! — 

That wasn’t enough. Some hope or guerdon aside from 
that must crown the hours and days of labor, even if his 
imagination had to supply it. Othewise it was horrible, 
monstrous. A compulsory guest, like a convict, and 
treated as one, — moved out of the house into a thatched 
hut of bamboo upon stilts like an ape in a cage; his food 
brought to him as to a beast! It was so his reflections 
went simmering in his skull under the brilliant sun, when 
suddenly he paused and straightened. Like a dart a 
thought of bold defiance struck through his brain. 

He was here working and waiting for only one reason, 
— Allene! For the first time he told himself this fact 
boldly, angrily. 

The meticulous care with which Galbraith kept the girl 
and himself apart, always seemingly standing like a 
quivering shadow between them, keeping Roderic em¬ 
ployed under his eye, having his daughter constantly 
with him in the house, on the veranda, on walks, had 
virtually alienated Roderic’s mind from any hope of be- 



106 


A NEW WORLD 


coming more friendly or even better acquainted with her. 
His past dreams and visions of her came to seem more 
and more the bitterly grotesque fancies of a sick or 
unhinged child. 

Old Galbraith, determined evidently to show him his 
place, had more and more alienated all of Rodericks no¬ 
tions from anything even remotely resembling equality or 
association. Smart and burn as he would under the 
treatment, Roderic had been compelled to adjust him¬ 
self to it, to accustom himself to the idea of a wide gulf 
between him, the castaway from nowhere, the hand be¬ 
fore the mast, and the carefully secluded daughter of the 
house. He had seen visions of himself narrating his 
story as an equal to old Galbraith, of the gradual soften¬ 
ing of the crusty old martinet, of living on equal terms, 
of close friendship with the whites of the island. But 
the old man never for an instant encouraged conversa¬ 
tion, never relaxed his wire-taut aloofness, never spoke 
to him except in staccato explosive commands. His 
daughter could not say much more than a good morning 
to the stranger and even that under her father’s eye. 
She, Allene, was obviously the reason for the old man’s 
fierce and jealous detestation of him. The stranger in 
turn could not consort with the natives, so he was vir¬ 
tually a prisoner of silence. 

His only friend, Akura, who often sighed over him 
upon the occasions when she brought his food to the 
bamboo hut, could unfortunately utter nothing but iso¬ 
lated words of cheer or sympathy, and even she was evi¬ 
dently under orders. 

That hot day, however, under the all but intolerable 
sun, he suddenly told himself that he would change all 
this, — a lawless and uncertain thought that yet re¬ 
mained to be executed. But he felt spurred to nameless 
action. 


THE STONE BY THE POOL 


107 


He glanced with somewhat youthful belligerence 
about the beach and toward the house, but his stern 
wrath-incrusted taskmaster was nowhere about. 

The heat must have got him,” he murmured to him¬ 
self, and aproaching a group of three palms drooping and 
mirroring themselves Narcissus-like in the lagoon, he 
stripped and dived head foremost under the surface. He 
rested for a moment on the coral-strewn bottom and then 
emerged and stood to his chin in the water to cool his 
heated blood. 

Three minutes later he came out, dressed quickly and 
walked resolutely up the path skirting the taro patches 
on the right lip of the stream toward the hill grove of 
breadfruit trees. Beyond those lay the spring and the 
grove of feis where he had first drunk deep and found 
Allene, and the hope — that was now anger and bitter¬ 
ness. 

“ Must take stock and think things over,” he reflected, 
but no new ideas would come to him as he ascended the 
slope. Beauty was all about him, purao, hibiscus and 
candlenut trees, liana and bougainvillea and wondrous 
ferns. Through a plantation of thin, dun-colored guavas, 
where the sun burned hot, he made his way with more 
throb and excitement now, like a fugitive, to another 
incult spot fringed by clusters of bamboo, that swal¬ 
lowed him like some blessed world of lustrous green, 
and a gorgeous variety of color, where all human cares 
seemed a grotesque anachronism. Fording a small 
creek that came from his left, another tributary feeding 
the stream below, he found himself in a few minutes at 
the rude horseshoe of blackened rocks, from the curve 
of which bubbled the jetting spring. 

He sat down upon the rock where first he had rested 
as a battered castaway and under that vivid gloom, in 
the midst of that living silence, he sighed in profound re- 


108 


A NEW WORLD 


laxation. Geological epochs ago now seemed that day 
when first he had come here, and his present state by com¬ 
parison suddenly assumed a brighter color. Thought now 
began to distil in his brain freely. 

A man could exist here alone, independent of other 
human beings,” he told himself. “ One need not starve. 
There were the banana plants, the coco palms and the 
breadfruit trees and a huge Pandanus, or screw pine, that 
alone could almost give shelter under its tentlike supports 
upon which the main trunk stood. Wattled with its own 
leaves and bamboos it would make a sort of dog-hutch 
where one might measurably escape the elements. But to 
come to the point of thinking and feeling thus inde¬ 
pendently,” it occurred to him, “ all the nursing and the 
care of Allene and Akura had gone before.” That reflec¬ 
tion gave his defiant train of batlike thoughts a sudden 
pause. Man may be roughly described as a grateful ani¬ 
mal, in despite of much evidence to the contrary. Roderic 
was for the moment nonplussed by a surge of gratitude 
in his heart. “ They, too, these women, were the prisoners 
and thralls of the old man below,” his spirit whispered. 
The power and potency of old Galbraith’s personality sud¬ 
denly loomed thick and opaque before him, a wall, a 
bastion of stone. That was the obstacle before him that 
required assault and combat. How unfathomably solitary 
he had been here on the day of his arrival! How pro¬ 
foundly solitary he was here to-day! Life, it occurred 
to him, was under all circumstances a passage of abysmal 
solitude through infinite emptiness. 

A stirring of the brush at the bougainvillea arch be¬ 
low suddenly startled him and arrested his attention. He 
leaped to his feet with the intent alertness of the quarry 
rather than the hunter. There, under the arch, stood the 
white figure of Allene Galbraith. 


THE STONE BY THE POOL 


109 


Roderic’s first thought was that she was coming with 
her father, stalking him. Her ambiguous smile did not 
reassure him. But as she began to advance slowly and he 
saw she was alone. Joy leaped up in his heart. 

‘^You’ve come to visit the spring — as I have,” he 
called out and automatically advanced toward her. A 
flutter of color, of embarrassment, played upon her fea¬ 
tures. She moved forward falteringly, as one in doubt 
and timidly temerarious. 

“ Yes, I often come here,” she began, speaking quickly. 
“ I think it is the loveliest spot on the island. This is 
where our house ought really to stand, instead of on the 
hot beach. Do you come here, too? ” 

“ This is the first time,” he explained, perceiving her 
embarrassment, “ since the time — the day you found me 
here. I haven’t had much time.” 

And in his memory suddenly shone that remote day; 
the past weeks of sullen drudgery were wiped away as by 
an enchantment. 

“ Yes, I know,” she said, slowly seating herself upon 
the stone and looking downward into her lap. “ Father 
has been working you awfully hard.” 

“ It isn’t that,” he murmured, standing over her. “ It’s 
the loneliness.” 

She lifted her glance. The hunger in his eyes touched 
her like naked want. She moved her head sadly from 
side to side in token of her heart’s regret. 

“Father’s way,” she all but whispered; “that is what 
I want to — apologize for.” 

“Oh, you needn’t do that,” he laughed almost joyously, 
“ now that I know you had no hand in it. I did feel 
rather like a stray dog whom nobody wanted — but,” he 
abruptly asked, “ did you know I was up here ? ” And 
the next instant he cursed his stupid egotism for asking 
so foolish a question of a girl. 


110 


A NEW WORLD 


She glanced at his eyes for an instant and then shook 
her head emphatically, — up and down. 

Whereat they both laughed deliciously and the silent 
grove by the spring was suddenly filled with quivering 
music and magic. 

“ Oh, Lord,” he exclaimed. Why didn’t I have sense 
enough to come up here before? ” 

“ Why — didn’t you ? ” she asked softly, with eyes 
arch and laughter-filled that set his pulses dancing. 

“ Wonder is,” he cried in delighted amazement, how 
I had sense enough to play truant and come up here now.” 

“ I had been hoping you would — so I could tell you,” 
she answered simply. 

Tell him what? He did not ask. Anything. He did 
not care. She had been hoping he would come here at 
the very time when suddenly out of a clear sky he had 
resolved to come. 

“ Telepathy, I think they call that,” he interpreted 
laughingly. 

“Yes — but it takes so long to work. I have been 
trying for days and days to — to make you think of 
coming up here when I was here — here on this stone.” 

“ This stone,” he murmured, unashamed now at the 
tenderness his voice assumed. “ Do you know, just be¬ 
fore you came, I had been thinking that one — that I 
could make this place my home? I know the reason I 
felt that way now. I’m going to call this the wishing 
stone.” 

“ Oh, that’s out of Barrie,” she cried, with laughing 
triumph. 

“ Is it ? ” he said. “ I don’t care, I never read it any¬ 
where. But that’s what I’m going to call it all the same 
— the Wishing Stone.” 

“ That’s very sweet,” she said. “ And what were you 
wishing for?” demurely. 


THE STONE BY THE POOL 


111 


Her delicately tinted face under the white leghorn hat, 
a soft radiance against the white of her simple frock, 
suddenly assumed to his eyes a beauty that differed 
saliently from the beauty of any other girl or woman 
he had ever seen. Strangely something like awe visited 
him. With the inherent modesty that oddly enough 
swept his young egotism aside at times, he felt that she 
was remote and beyond his reach, like a star. 

I was wishing,^’ he answered her slowly, “ for some 
way of getting away from this island-” 

“ I don’t wonder at all,” she broke in soberly. “ I am 

very sorry-” and he hated to see her face clouding 

over. 

-But I shall never wish that again,” he added. 

He experienced an intense desire to touch the hand lying 
in her lap, the hem of her dress, but it was a desire 
purely chivalrous, almost the desire of a worshipper 
toward a goddess. 

On a sudden she startled him by putting out her hand. 
After an instant of inexplicable hesitation he enclosed the 
small white hand in both of his own. Their gaze hung 
together for a second, then she softly withdrew her hand. 

‘‘We are friends — real friends — aren’t we?” she 
spoke in a way that seemed light to him for so solemn a 
moment. 

“ Friends? ” he repeated. He had no words for emen¬ 
dation of that simple term, though his lonely heart was 
charged and surcharged with volumes. 

“Well, then,” she continued gaily, “ you must let me 
give you some advice.” He was intensely reluctant for 
that magical moment to dissolve into mere conversation, 
but he nodded his head in vigorous affirmation. 

“ First of all,” she pursued eagerly, “ let me tell you 
about my father. He is not as hard as he seems.” Her 





112 


A NEW WORLD 


father was not the subject nearest to Roderic’s heart, but 
he listened to her intently. 

Father ha^ had a great deal of disappointment,” she 
continued, “and hardships and unhappiness; and he’s 
come to dislike most men. That is why he has made 
his home here on the island, as far away from the world 
as he could possibly get.” 

“ Don’t you like it here? ” he queried. 

“ Oh, I! What do I matter ? But I must tell you- 

You see, father was a sea captain. He loves the sea. 
But — he had an accident. He lost his ship. He was 
one of the best captains his firm ever had. They were 
an English firm in Liverpool. But when a man loses a 
ship, they’re very hard on him — as though it were his 
fault — as though any captain would want to lose his 
ship! They never offered him another ship. And father 
was too proud to go to other firms in England — and 
have to tell that he lost his last ship — with a lot of ex¬ 
planations — don’t you see ? ” 

“Of course I do!” If only, he prayed inwardly, 
nothing would come to interrupt her! 

“ Well, it rather broke him up. He is very sensitive. 
And he knew about this island,” she pursued. “ Very 
few people know about it, although islands in this part 
of the world, whatever they are, belong to the French. 
Father went to the French authorities and got permission 
or a concession, or whatever it is, to work this island — 
for copra and shell, you know. And they were very nice, 
the French— they let him have it — it was uninhabited, 
you see, and so small. They even made him magistrate 
of it! ” And she laughed at the bombastic grotesque¬ 
ness of the word and the office when applied to this pin’s 
point of land. 

“ He doesn’t get awfully rich here,” she proceeded, still 
smiling pensively, “ but we can live here as we do. He 



THE STONE BY THE POOL 


113 


brought my mother here and me when I was only a tiny 
baby. We didn’t live here all the year — only about 
eight or nine months. And father used to bring natives 
to work — and then when the work was done, we’d go 
back and live in Papeete or even in Hawaii, for the rest 
of the year, until it was time to come back. He seemed 
content here, poor father — though I’ve never seen him 
really happy. My mother-” 

And then abruptly she paused. He strained his ears 
to determine whether it was the sound of any one ap¬ 
proaching that had suddenly arrested her speech. Per¬ 
fect stillness, however, reigned all about. The faint 
breeze had fallen absolutely dead. The foliage overhead 
hung motionless and the broad sheathlike banana leaves 
drooped still. His intuition then correctly suggested to 
him that the mention of her mother was the cause of her 
sudden silence. He waited without speaking. 

“ I think I ought to tell you,” she began again, “ about 
my mother.” She lowered her head and appeared a shade 
paler to his eyes. “ That will help make you understand 
father better.” Again she paused, and he glanced away 
from her in sympathy with her apparent difficulty. 

Mother never liked this place,” she resumed. “ She 
was heaps younger than father.” She hesitated and her 
faltering was painful to him, because it was revealed to 
him clearly that this part of the narative was painful to 
her. He was feeling singularly at one with her. 

“ One of those years, when we were at Hawaii, I was 
ailing. I was about nine years old. It was decided that 
my mother and I were not to come here that year. We 
stayed in a little bungalow at Waikiki, so as to be near 
to doctors. I was getting better and I remember my 
mother being so happy, singing to herself all day long. 
People used to come to see us; American naval officers 
were always coming up. She was so beautiful! 



114 


A NEW WORLD 


“ Like her daughter,” Roderic interposed huskily. 

“ Oh, no! ” she exclaimed sadly. “ She was really 
beautiful — and so alive ! And one of the naval officers 
fell in love with her,” she breathed with an agonizing 
effort, “ and she with him. And when father came back,” 
she all but whispered hurriedly, “ he found it out — 
mother told him — and he — Oh, it was terrible, they 
both suffered so, and father was so wild and I couldn’t 
do anything. And mother fell ill — and died in a few 
days. She didn’t want to live.” 

Allene’s lips quivered and the tears welled from her 
eyes. She could not speak. She covered her face. 

Roderic sat in a very anguish of torture, unable to help 
her, unable to move even, full of wild longing to take 
her in his arms and to comfort her as he remembered in 
a flash his own mother, now dead, comforting him when 
he was a child. All his emotions were suspended except 
the one emotion of an overflowing affection for this girl 
who now suddenly seemed ineffably near and dear to 
him. 

“ Oh, don’t do that — please don’t-” broke from 

his dry throat hoarsely. But he proceeded no further. 

“ Oh, I am quite all right — now — it’s over-” 

She suddenly shone upon him through her tears like an 
April rainbow, and he marvelled at her power of control, 
for his own eyes were dim and salty. “I didn’t mean to 
be a baby,” she smiled tremulously. “ Well, father 
brought me back here — and except for my two years at 
school in Edinburgh — that is when I was coming back 
with Captain Flitch — I have always been here — and I 
suppose always shall be. But don’t you see,” she con¬ 
tinued eagerly, “ that father has had some reasons to 
be-the way he is ? He always says he hates Eng¬ 

lishmen and Yankees — but he’s pretty fine underneath, 
all the same. But he does want managing, I know that. 





THE STONE BY THE POOL 


115 


He can make it pretty hard for people about him. Bruce 
is about the only man he has any confidence in — be¬ 
cause he can do anything he likes with Bruce.” 

The question in Rodericks mind as to who and what 
Bruce was, that would ordinarily have leaped uppermost, 
now in the face of the girl’s intimate and throbbing revel¬ 
ation, sank into the background of his brain. He felt 
himself athrill with sympathy, possessed of a mighty 
force, altruistic, protective, intimately tender. 

Over all the web of circumstance and personality, hers 
and his own, shone a sweet, a radiant glow from a new 
and different heaven. For the first time in all his own 
vicissitudes, roamings and fortunes, he felt himself 
lifted from the workaday pathways of life into the beau¬ 
tiful uplands of Romance. Romance, a fitful emotion, a 
wandering and erratic fragrance in life, now for the 
first time completely permeated him and he felt the sheer 
business of existence changed to a novel and gleaming 
richness, to a high and soul-filling adventure. A new 
immediacy took hold of his mind and senses. Every¬ 
thing seemed to date from that hour. He felt himself 
gripping upon life with a strangely firmer hold. All 
reality seemed to begin with and to be steeped in that 
brimming wine of romance. 

“ I must go now,” she murmured gently. “ Father is 
sure to notice my being so long away. He was dozing 
— he sleeps so badly at night.” 

There was a multitude of things he desired to say, of 
questions to ask her. But nothing of practical im¬ 
portance seemed to count in the light of the one im¬ 
palpable, indefinable fact of warm intimacy with Al- 
lene. Her wish was supreme in the light of the great 
gift she had bestowed, of the favor by which she had 
changed a world of bitterness to an exhilarating bright 
existence, — of the character, the personality she had 


116 


A NEW WORLD 


revealed. He felt a surge of wild gratitude because she 
had suddenly changed him to another person. By making 
him her friend and confidant she had raised him, he 
dimly felt even then, to a high pinnacle, above himself. 

Impulsively he took both her hands in his from the 
lap in which they were resting, raised and warmly kissed 
them. He had never done such a thing in his life before 
and, when he had read of it, he had inwardly felt con¬ 
tempt at the mawkishness of it. But it seemed wonder¬ 
fully natural now, like her own candid naturalness. Al- 
lene leaped up in a laughing confusion, a faint flush 
mounting to her cheeks. 

I only want to ask you — one thing — a great fa¬ 
vor,” he stammered. “ Will you let me see you and talk 
to you sometimes — as often as you possibly can — if 
only for a few minutes ? That-that-” he hesi¬ 

tated, ‘‘ will make — life worth living! ” She stood silent 
for a moment, looking directly into his eyes. 

“ Perhaps-perhaps I could manage it,” she an¬ 

swered slowly, thoughfully, while his heart was bounding 
in his breast, in his very ear drums. “ But — I hardly 
know how just now.” 

‘‘ Do you think Akura-” he suggested, “ might 

be able-? ” 

“ Oh, yes! ” she interrupted positively. “ Akura will 

know-and she will be delighted. She likes you.” 

And her shy smile thrilled him like an electric charge. 

“ But she had better not know-officially — so far 

as you are concerned.” He stared in astonishment at 
what seemed to him positively unheard-of resource in this 
inexperienced, isolated girl. He had yet to learn of the 
quickness of woman’s wit for the end near to her heart. 

“ ril tell you what Fll do,” she announced with grave 

decision ; “ I shall write a little note the day before- 

and put it under the — the Wishing Stone here by the 










THE STONE BY THE POOL 117 

spring-and then if you are here/’ she added shyly — 

“ why, then we can talk.” 

“ And you’ll say about what time you’ll be here ? ” 

“ Oh, of course! ” she said with all her natural gayety. 

Now I must run.” He seized her hand swiftly. Hur¬ 
riedly she returned his pressure and in a moment was 
hastening away toward the bougainvillea arch between the 
two trees, that seemed designed to crown her. 

Once she was hidden by the foliage a vast loneliness 
fell upon Roderic. It was as though the curtain of life 
were rung down and only the pervasive solitude of a 
solitary world remained. All nature was there, lustrous, 
and fairylike as before. He gazed about dully and saw 
it all about him, yet his eyes saw nothing but emptiness. 
A chill feeling of despair touched his heart. Hastily he^ 
climbed a coco palm so that he might catch the last; 
glimpse of her as she descended the slope. Perched pre¬ 
cariously among the soft green branches above the nut 
cluster he watched her white figure, slowing up as she 
neared home, glancing this way and that, as though re¬ 
turning from an ordinary ramble. His heart throbbingly 
followed her. At last she was past the cane brake and 
wandering through the garden patches, seemingly ob¬ 
livious of all that had gone before. She was finally lost 
to his view on the veranda. He turned sadly away, gaz¬ 
ing about the island, to all the extent of the horizon. 
Suppose he saw a sail approaching, a ship standing fairly 
in toward the island — the thought came like a faint in¬ 
creasing phosphorescence to his brain — would he signal 
it frantically, as once he had thought he would, in a wild 
desire to be taken off? With a strange shock at his own 
inexplicable nature, he realized that emphatically his an¬ 
swer, without a shadow of regret, was No! And then 
almost simultaneously he descried a white sail gleaming 
against the intense blue of the ocean in the direction from 



118 


A NEW WORLD 


which his own raft — how long ago it was! — had been 
cast upon the thundering milk-white surf of the reef. 
The vessel from his eyrie looked inordinately small. The 
flapping of the canvas as she drew nearer told him that 
she had scracely a cupful of wind, scarcely enough for 
steerageway. 

“ Bruce-1 shouldn’t wonder,” he said to himself, 

and his heart grew unaccountably heavier. “ Wish I knew 
the sort of bird he is! ” He watched the little vessel for 
a few minutes, fascinated, and then slid down the rough 
stem. Briskly he made his way on the right of the stream 
as he had come, through the breadfruit grove across the 
creek, past the gray guavas and the coco and garden 
plantations, by the native houses. “Yoranna!” brown 
men, women, girls and children sang out from their 
birdlike houses or from shaded spots near them. He 
returned their greetings gayly with a wave of the hand 
and hurried on. They told themselves no doubt that 
he would learn to hurry less under a hot sun as time 
went on. 

To his relief he found the shed precisely as he had left 
it and the beach empty. The surface of the lagoon was 
like an opal. Then nonchalantly he walked toward the 
birdcage near the house. His food was waiting for 
him in a wooden bowl covered with leaves. 

“Have you cleaned up the store shed?” came in a 
rasping voice from the veranda. Old Galbraith was 
standing erect and rigid, facing him. He rose and came 
out. 

“ Yes, sir,” he said. “ All done.” 

“ H’m,” the old man grunted as though casting about 
in his mind. 

“ I saw a sail to the nor’west of us,” Roderic added, 
with a sudden feeling of kindness toward Allene’s father 
flooding him. “ I shouldn’t wonder if that were Bruce.” 



THE STONE BY THE POOL 


119 


“ Mr. McClung, sir!” rapped the old man. “ His name 
is Mr. McClung to you. How did you come to see a 
sail from your place on the beach ? ” Excitement now 
possessed him. 

“ I climbed a tree, sir! ” was the ready answer. 

“ That’s the most enterprising thing I’ve known you 
to do since you’re here,” shouted the old man. Yes, 
it must be he. Go call the men,” he cried hoarsely. 
“ Tell them Tapena Bruce is coming. Tell them to man a 

boat and go out to meet him. Damnation!-Don’t 

stare! You’ve got your orders; be quick about it! You 
need not go along with them. You stay on the beach! ” 

The one thing uppermost in Roderic’s mind beneath 
this shower of irritability was: 

“ Lucky he didn’t ask me which tree I climbed.” 



CHAPTER XI 


THE LOVERS 

The arrival of Bruce, rather than stirring events, kept 
Roderic completely unnoticed, in the background. If 
the surprise of the newcom.er at finding a new white 
man on the island was great, he dissembled it successfully 
and took Roderic’s presence very nearly for granted. 
He had heard nothing in Papeete of the foundering of 
the Alice nor had any survivors appeared there. If he 
had any curiosity touching the castaway, he meant to 
satisfy it elsewhere. 

For days Roderic, together with two or three native 
lads, worked at shifting the stores from the little schooner 
to the store shed, arranging and packing, and Bruce gave 
a great impression of preoccupation, — coming and go¬ 
ing, giving orders, directing here, there and everywhere. 
He was of those who mask an absence of warmth and 
good nature by a constant factitious smile made by the 
muscles of the eyes. The tendency to languor, the gold 
and peacock-blue dazzle of the waterside, seemingly made 
no slightest impression upon him. He was busy, alert, 
grave and bustling. 

His rather flattish, somewhat pockmarked face, shaven 
and small-eyed, with a nondescript thickish nose, seemed 
to betray something wanting, a something incomplete. 
It was the type of face that demanded full lips, and that 
man’s lips were thin. His manner and movements were 
brisk and his voice possessed a certain forced resonance. 


THE LOVERS 


121 


and always conveyed a sense of artificiality. He bustled 
and smiled coldly and seemed as one overcharged with 
importance. 

Saturday was the day of Bruce’s return and on Sunday 
morning, to Rodericks astonishment, he conducted a re¬ 
ligious service in the hut called the chapel. i 

“ A missionary! ” said Roderic to himsHf in amaze¬ 
ment and followed the service, which was in both native 
and English, with a sort of dissolving consternation. A 
prayer was offered for those saved from the perils of the 
sea and Roderic felt intuitively certain that the celebrant 
of the service had only himself in mind during that thanks¬ 
giving. Whether professional or amateur missionary, 
Bruce McClung in his complex role offered a type baffling 
and hitherto unknown to Roderic’s experience. If, as 
he unconsciously felt, this man were to prove an added 
antagonist, he was at a loss how to encounter him. Thus 
far, however, Bruce’s notice of him had been less than 
scant. For Bruce clung to the Galbraiths and seemed to 
be forever accidentally at Allene’s side, a phase which just 
as unpremeditatedly she seemed bent upon correcting. 

From his birdcage house, where he lay for hours on 
his bamboo couch staring into the barred gloom, from 
the garden, from points on the beach, Roderic’s gaze kept 
forever turning toward the house, toward the trio of 
whites upon the veranda, with gloomy solitary eyes and 
an aching hungering heart, feeling the brand of the pariah 
upon him and smarting under the sting. Allene, who 
had for a magical moment given him of her friendship, 
seemed to have withdrawn it without a trace. No overt 
hostile act is needed to produce hatred in another, and 
the insult of indifference can rankle more burningly than 
billingsgate. Cold neglect can brew a cold fury as deadly 
as any hotter emotion. 

Late afternoon of that Sunday, after a swim in the 


122 


A NEW WORLD 


lagoon, Roderic sauntered away through the garden in 
the lee of the fragrant, trellised walk that ran nearly the 
whole length of it and up on the hill toward the spring. 
There, at any rate, he could be in absolute solitude out 
of sight of the house that now spelled sharp pain to 
him. As he skirted the canebrake and began to move up 
the slope, it occurred to him in the bitterness of his heart: 
Suppose he climbed the tall palm at the spring and sighted 
a ship standing directly for the island, would he not hail 
it with joy and board it, if he could, with eagerness, and 
leave that accursed island? Only a faint, an exceeding 
faint dash of uncertainty clouded this stirring hope with¬ 
in him. Allene had been kind to him, and the thought 
of going fell heavily upon his spirit; but in any case, he 
told himself, it was ridiculous. No ships were coming 
here. If only there were some sign or message from 
Allene! But that, he told himself, was equally impossible. 
How could she have eluded those two dried sharks in the 
house ? 

Nevertheless, the first thing he did after passing the 
bougainvillea arch and reaching the spring was to insert 
his hand with tremulous eagerness under the rock where 
Allene’s message was to be deposited, if it ever came. 

A little dark-golden lizard darted out and startled him 
to a degree that caused him to jump fully three feet 
backward. He laughed aloud at himself for a nervous 
idiot and again felt under the stone. He was even more 
surprised when his fingers brought forth a small leaf of 
ruled paper, torn from a memorandum book, bearing the 
words: 

It is just possible I may be reading here Wednesday 
about sunset — A. 

A sharp jet of pleasure in his hungering heart was al¬ 
most immediately succeeded by a pang of regret at the 
long delay. But this was soon swept aside by a pulsing 


THE LOVERS 


123 


exultation. She, at* all events, had not forgotten him. 
The only person in the house who mattered was thinking 
of him and regretting his loneliness. And the loneliness 
and bitterness were promptly forgotten. The thrill of un¬ 
certainty, the excitement of conflict quickened his blood 
and dilated his nostrils. 

‘‘ ril have to fight it out on this line,” he told himself 
eagerly and sank down upon what he and Allene had 
dubbed the Wishing Stone in a very loom of thought shot 
with the threads of fantastic imaginings. Obstacles that 
are stone walls to middle-aged reflections are gossamer 
to the fancies of twenty. Nothing is impossible to the 
prince in the fairy tale and every youth is to himself a 
prince. The desire to do something valiant and splendid 
surged hotly in his veins, to engage these two protagonists 
in a combat, be it of wit or force; the craving played in 
his mind like a fountain. 

“ What could be the meaning of that fellow Bruce’s 
attentions to Allene ? ” That thought suddenly swept his 
golden-threaded fantasies with the sharpness and force 
of a typhoon. That rabbit and — Allene? Why had 
he thought of it? Why had he not thought of it before? 
It was preposterous — horrible! And yet, who knew? 
An inward shudder of repulsion shook him at the thought. 
He could not entertain blackness. Anyway, in three days 
he would see her —• talk with her — hear her. That was 
the wonderful prospect before him, full of color and light. 

Steadily and silently he worked for the next three 
days, now under the direction of one of the white men, 
now under the other’s, at tasks the most menial. They 
seemed plagued and harassed to find work for him. 
After transferring some kerosene from red barrels 
brought in the schooner into metal containers in the oil 
shed, Bruce actually ordered him to clean and fill half 
a score of lamps. To them he was still the sailor before 


124 


A NEW WORLD 


the mast and no work was too menial. With compressed 
lips, however, swallowing offense, Roderic kept on 
grimly, his mind illumined by an inner glow of resolve 
and purpose. Wednesday seemed the longest day in his 
experience. Late that afternoon he understood why 
Allene had set Wednesday for the tryst. 

At sunset there was to be singing in the himene house 
or chapel for the natives, whose emotional natures were 
stirred and delighted by rhythmic shouting. There were 
few young men on the island, Roderic had noted. Virtu¬ 
ally all the men were settled, middle-aged, if not elderly. 
The problem of labor had evidently been worked out with 
care. Younger men and women, too, if restlessness seized 
‘upon them, were given opportunities to go elsewhere into 
a more exciting life. The need of the island was 
tranquillity. 

There was a great washing and bathing in the lagoon 
toward sundown. Men and women in their pareics came 
running down to the beach under the palms and purao 
trees to immerse and cleanse themselves before the 
assembly. 

Orui, the gnarled, mahogany-colored overseer of the 
coconut plantation, a skilled copra maker, came swim¬ 
ming toward Roderic and chuckled softly. The boom 
of the surf and the cries of bosun and frigate birds out 
on the strip of reef were the only sounds of nature except 
for the chattering and laughing of the natives on the 
beach farther toward the right. He had worked much 
with the old man at the copra-shed and had become 
pleasantly friendly. 

“ Ah, it is good to live,” murmured Orui, who had 
smatterings of a sort of English. “ ’ill you not sing 
himenes with us to-night ? ” 

“ No,” said Roderic, eager to get away. “ I am weary 
and must rest.” 


THE LOVERS 


125 


“ You Papalagi find work hard in these islands,” 
philosophized Orui. “ Yet it is very near to the Garden 
of Eden that Tapena Bruce tells us about. It would 
be heaven if man did not love and hate.” 

” But I neither love nor hate,” smiled Roderic, “ I only 
work.” 

The dark old man scanned his features narrowly. 

“If you don’t,” he finally uttered sententiously, “ then 
you soon will. Men cannot live without loving and hat¬ 
ing. Remember old Orui is your friend.” 

Roderic laughed and scuttled up the beach to where 
his clothes lay under an aoa tree. But once alone he 
paused. Why did old Orui say that? What did he 
know? His one desire now, however, was to ascend to 
the spring where he wildly hoped Allene was “ reading.” 

The amber light of the sun that was now visibly rac¬ 
ing away to the westward beyond the island, the voices 
of the lagoon in front of him as he dressed, suddenly 
presented one of those revelations of beauty that at times 
floods us and strikes us dumb and still. Like a dreaming 
boy, filled with his own plans and imaginings, he pulled 
on his shirt and paused with a sandal poised in one 
hand, gazing intently at nothing, — at everything. The 
entire universe seemed to be compressed in the space 
behind his eyeballs and all that was far away and all that 
was near at hand were simultaneously present to him. 
The garden at home, at Adams Rock, the lamplit living 
room, the voyage out in the Alice, the shipwreck, the gar¬ 
den and plantations of this island, Motu, as the natives 
called it, were all encompassed in this sudden burst of 
soul-vision. 

He knew not how long he stood there rapt, silent, 
wondrously alert, yet stone-still like a statue. Probably 
no more than a few seconds of time had actually passed. 
But it seemed a lifetime, an eternity. He laughed aloud 


126 


A NEW WORED 


to himself as he emerged and proceeded feverishly with 
his dressing. A rush of wild joy and primitive energy 
came to him. The world and the men to be encountered 
seemed like so much chaff before his flooding strength. 
With the keenness of the savage, instinctively dodging 
in and out among tree trunks and vegetation, to avoid 
being seen, he hastened to the spring. 

The very earth he was treading seemed strangely 
nearer and more friendly to his hurrying feet. The great, 
elaborately patterned leaves of the breadfruit trees, the 
rustle of the artus, the feathery tops of the palms, the 
very ferns that ordinarily have a cold mysterious air 
seemed more warmly welcoming. He approached the 
spring, whose broidery of vegetation appeared now dim 
and crepuscular, with a beating heart. He was deliciously 
startled to find himself suddenly standing before Allene. 

She was wearing a frock of dark-blue voile instead of 
her customary white and she was hatless. Her face, 
framed in her massive golden-brown hair, resembled an 
oval miniature upon which an artist had lavished tender 
pains. She looked up at him smiling yet with a look of 
sweet concern in her eyes. 

“ I am a little late,” were Roderic’s first words, ‘‘ I 
had to get rid of paraffin on my hands and arms. I hope 
you haven’t been here long? ” 

“ Oh, yes, hours,” and she put out her little hand. “ I 
have been reading. I couldn’t have come away later — 
when they come back to the house.” 

“ I see,” he said, still holding her hand. “ You are 
watched too.” 

“ I suppose old people are like that.” She withdrew 
her hand softly and moved toward the stone. ‘‘ It’s 
hard for them to remember how younger people feel.” 

“ But Bruce — McClung,” he blurted out the name 
against his will. He isn’t old? ” 


THE LOVERS 


127 


“ Yes, he is,” she returned with energy. “ It’s just 
because he is more like an old man that father trusts him 
so. 

He had it in mind to say something fiery and sharp 
concerning Bruce, but her words suddenly seemed to 
nullify him, as though a pen had been run through his 
name. A sense of deep relief, of lightness, came to his 
heart. 

“ Well, this island is a small world,” he told her gaily. 
“If they represent all the old age here, why, we are all 
there is to the youth of the place. And youth, I believe, 
always wins — in the end.” 

His light-heartedness seemed to stir and stimulate her. 
Instantly she caught his gayety. 

“ It’s very sensible of you to take it that way,” she 
exclaimed. “ I know only too well that they have been 
treating you shamefully these past days. And it hurts 
me to see it. They feel, I suppose, that it’s their island 
and you have broken in on them from outside. But as 
long as you don’t mind — so you understand it isn’t-” 

“-Isn’t you? ” he caught her up with a laugh. “ If 

it only were you! I could work ten times as hard for 
you and not mind it. That would be different. But it is 
different. It’s different, anyway! ” 

The starlike light from her deep grey eyes streamed like 
a magic emanation into his and shook him. 

“ I am so glad,” she murmured. “ It’s only a few 
months,” she added. “ And if you feel that way, they 
will pass quickly and — you won’t be miserable.” 

Roderic could have sworn a faint sigh escaped her, 
as she turned away toward the darker grove to the right 
of the bougainvillea arch. 

And then, on a sudden, the energy and the courage of 
half an hour earlier on the beach came surging back into 
his heart. All the physical, intent alertness came with 




128 


A NEW WORLD 


it, but the controlling power of his mind seemed suddenly 
suspended. His words came of themselves, instinctively: 

“ But I don’t want to go away,” he uttered hurriedly 
yet clearly. “ Not as long as you are here! ” And his 
breath came parched and choking behind the words. 

She was silent for a space. Yet he could hear her quick 
gasp and see the sudden rising and falling of her bosom. 
For one instant of doubt and troubled fear that he had 
hurt her he sat gazing at her in silence, but the mad 
throbbing in his pulses gave him no respite for contem¬ 
plation. He seized her hands and held them unresisting 
in his own fevered ones. 

“Shouldn’t I have said that?” he murmured hotly, 
his eyes searching her face. “ Did I oflFend you? ” 

She shook her head slowly and turned toward him a 
radiance so gentle, so marvelous, that the whole glade 
about them seemed to be illumined as by a soft new light. 

“ No,” she whispered. “ It was the sweetest thing 
that any one has ever said to me. But-” 

Roderic, however, upon hearing these words, was not 
sufificiently master of himself to let her proceed with any 
objections. New and strange words in a torrent came 
rushing out from his lips. 

“ Allene, my darling, I love you — I love you — don’t 
you see, sweetheart?” He drew her forcefully to him 
and with his arm clasping her slender figure tightly, 
poured out his love. “ From the first minute I saw you, 
you just seemed to take hold of me. And from a boy I 
became a man. You were always in my mind — inside 
my heart. Do you remember how you looked at me in 
the harbor of Papeete when you were leaving the Alicef 
I wanted to kneel down to you and to beg your forgive¬ 
ness for the rude, brutal way I spoke to you on the 
voyage. I couldn’t get you out of my thoughts.” She 
moved in his arms gently, but he only held her closer. 



THE LOVERS 


129 


“ Don’t move — I must tell you,” he continued in a 
passionate tumult. “ Why do you suppose I shipped on 
the Alice homeward bound? Because she was to call at 
Papeete — and you got off at Papeete — that’s where 
I last saw you. And I spent all my shore leave making 
inquiries about your island; I was afraid 1 would never 
see you again. Then the shipwreck — it was Fate brought 
me to you — don’t you see, my darling — Allene ? ” He 
breathed her name tenderly against her hair and abruptly 
his torrent of words ceased. 

The girl was motionless and he felt a sudden shame in 
holding her thus imprisoned without any response on 
her part. Slowly he released her. 

“ But you don’t care — that way,” he muttered shame¬ 
facedly. “ I didn’t — I shouldn’t-” and he was mis¬ 

erably silent as he kneeled beside her. He had a hungry 
desire to rise to heights before her. Yet he was suddenly 
swept by a wave of misery and humility. How had he 
dared? He was very young. 

Then gently she lifted up her hands on a level with 
his shoulders, gazed at him for a moment untellably 
eloquent and clasping her hands behind his neck, drew 
him gently and kissed him upon the lips. 

“ Allene — my darling,” he murmured in a wild 
ecstasy. ‘‘ I may leave you — but it will be when I am 
dead! ” His resolve was as sealed at that instant as a 
decree of high Heaven. 

And no one, he knew, no one in the wide world, in all 
the populous lands and distant oceans, had ever loved as 
he loved this fragrant girl in his arms. “ Did you ever 
think of me at all? ” he breathed against her eyes, be¬ 
fore I came?” 

“If thinking and wishing could bring you here-” 

she answered, tightening her arms about him, “ then I 
felt sure you would come! I thought and thought about 




130 


A NEW WORLD 


you — I hardly knew why — it seemed so strange — 
ridiculous — a total stranger. And yet — oh, it was im¬ 
possible -” 

“ You, too! ” he cried in a delirium of bliss. Then, 
by God, it’s a miracle! Do you suppose it could ever 
have happened before in this world — shipwreck and 
all?” He felt himself to be saliently reasonable — not 
to be swerved by emotion. 

“ That was the first thing I thought of,” she whispered, 
‘‘ when I found you here. Oh, I prayed half that night! ” 
Angels to him were pale phantasms beside this divine girl. 
All beauty, all love, cosmic, endless, lay clasped that mo¬ 
ment in his arms. He was a Titan, a superman! 

In a rapt illumined silence they held each other for 
a space, an epoch of time, and only the rustle of the 
fronds and leaves and the distant voice of the surf were 
intermittently audible in midst of the beating of their 
own hearts. 

“ And I came limping, shipwrecked, cutting my way 
through the chaparral with a knife — remember?” he 
murmured, marveling “ because I had to get to you! ” 

“ And something drew me to come here that day,” she 
whispered against his breast; “ something pulled and 
drew me so that I could not, could not resist! ” 

“ She is mine! ” the fierce pulses in his brain told him; 

mine — my own! ” 

In later years Roderic had occasion to recall those un¬ 
spoken words in his triumphant exulting heart far more 
vividly than any of the spoken ones. At that instant, 
however, the thin-lipped visage of Bruce McClung rose 
before him, accompanied by a sharp imperious pang of 
mingled contempt and resentment. He wanted to say 
something to Allene touching McClung, to ask her ques¬ 
tions, but he could not bring himself to break the en- 



THE LOVERS 131 

chantment o£ the moment; the name somehow would not 
pass the portals of his lips. 

A call in a low, soft yet penetrating voice suddenly 
sounded in the forest — quite near them. 

^‘Au-e! Au-e!” 

He leaped to his feet like a startled stag. Dusk had 
fallen. He could see no one. 

Allene also rose from the stone to her feet. She 
uttered something quick and reassuring in the native. 

‘‘ It is Akura,” she murmured, turning to Roderic. 
‘‘ I must leave you. I must hurry back. Father is miss¬ 
ing me. But I love you — I love you,” she breathed hur¬ 
riedly. “ And ril come again. I don’t know when. 
You’ll find a message — Sunday perhaps. Good-by, my 

— Roderic! ” She kissed him quickly and ran down the 
slope. He did not see Akura at all. That brown lady 
had the delicacy to remain on the other side of the bou¬ 
gainvillea arch and not intrude upon the lovers. 

His first clear recognition of what followed his dream¬ 
like interlude with Allene, was when he found himself 
standing under the most brilliant stars he had ever re¬ 
membered seeing in the dim abyss of the tropic forest 

— alone! 

The very pain of the discovery seemed incredible. 
Alone! 


CHAPTER XII 


THE REASON FOR BRUCE 

The next morning, in the ardent blue-and-gold per¬ 
fection of the eternal summer, Roderic felt himself in¬ 
credibly whole and happy. He was like a creature that 
could fly, so light and airy he seemed to himself, and 
yet solid, foursquare and compact, as though he could go 
through a stone wall. The palms nodded, the lagoon 
sparkled, and the surf on the reef was singing familiar 
songs in deep organ tones. The marvelous tranquillity 
was so profound that it drew upward from unknown 
depths within him snatches of poetry, dim and forgotten, 
and some of them wholly strange, his own. 

He was working at the copra-shed with Orui and Orui 
was chattering with an incessant monotonous garrulity. 
Galbraith himself had ordered him to the work and now 
the taut old man, disdaining the camp chair that Orui 
had placed for him, stood rigid and alert, watching the 
work. The willingness, the energy and the ease with 
which his uninvited guest addressed himself to his toil 
of filling and shifting bags with dried copra seemed to 
make a curious impression upon old Galbraith. He 
looked on, fascinated, turned away, and watched again. 
What thoughts were passing through his morose old 
brain it was difficult to tell. But on a sudden he called 
out. 

“ Whitford! ” 

“ Yes, sir,” Roderic paused in surprise and gazed di¬ 
rectly, nonchalantly, into the old man’s eyes. 


THE REASON FOR BRUCE 


133 


“ Come here,” Roderic approached him. ** Do you 
know anything about navigation? ” he half snarled. The 
query was so strange that Roderic could scarcely credit 
his ears. 

“ A little — not much, sir,” he answered. ‘‘ I began 
to work at it a bit on the last voyage of the Alicef' 

“ Ah! — Every white man who has got brains 

enough ought to know something of navigation”- 

naveegation, he pronounced it. “ Stop in at the house 
this evening and Fll lend you a book or two.” 

“ Thank you, sir,” Roderic answered mechanically, 
without thinking. Then at once a hot flush passed over 
his entire body, and he wondered whether he could have 
heard aright. What was the reason for this sudden un¬ 
bending on the part of the rigid old man? Could it be 
that he. knew — something — anything about — Allene 
and himself? Could Akura have told? But of course 
that was impossible — unbelievable. If he knew! 

Go back to your work I ” snapped the old man. Rod¬ 
eric again glanced at the inscrutable weather-beaten face 
before him with its innumberable little wrinkles and re¬ 
treated with alacrity. 

‘‘ What can be eating the old man? ” he said to him¬ 
self as he attacked the copra bags with even more savage 
energy. “ Wait until he knows I ” And still his mind 
in a tumult revolved round and round that sudden im¬ 
pulse of Galbraith’s, endeavoring feverishly to fathom 
the obscure motives, the strange whim that caused him 
to take this abrupt interest in the acquirements of his 
“ slave,” as Roderic called himself. And that word sud¬ 
denly gave him a cue. Ah! Perhaps old Galbraith 
planned to keep him here like the others, a slave of his 
dominating will, a toiler in his vineyard? And all at 
once to his restless mood the tiny island, the fixed abode 
with all the world lost, shed upon his mind a somber 



134 


A NEW WORLD 


gloom beyond comparison oppressive and dreary, like 
prison bars. Then supervened the warm and luring image 
of Allene and the gloom was wiped away like a cobweb. 
The thought of Allene exerted a sudden pull to this dot 
of the earth like a powerful magnet and he felt strangely, 
intimately friendly toward old Galbraith. Whatever his 
motive, was he not Allene’s father? At any rate, at that 
moment Roderic felt himself a sort of benevolent giant 
in stature, eight feet tall at least, cunning as Ulysses and 
a match for all and more than all on the island. From 
an alien castaway he suddenly felt himself to have become 
the most favored mortal on the island. The very pores 
of his skin seemed to exude an endless radiant vitality 
as his brain and hands worked busily. He was a lover 
beloved! 

In the wistfulness and inexplicable changes of after 
years, Roderic had occasion to remember vividly the 
mingled emotions of that brilliant morning on Omotu. 
A swarm of flattering hopes kept buzzing about his ears 
and he could scarcely contain his impatience for the 
evening to come. He saw himself received in equality 
at last, made much of, deferred to, become an intimate 
guest of the big house, and all the rest should easily 
follow. In the past, it occurred to him, he had been 
too suspicious, too ready to take offense, and this he 
attributed to his harsh experience at sea that instead 
of hardening him had made him tender. And floating 
through his mind came some detached phrases from the 
Odyssey which he had read the year before he left home: 

“ I tell thee there is naught else worse than the sea to 
confound a man, how hardy soever he may be,” and 
again, “ For I have been shamefully broken in many 
waters.” 

Shamefully broken! That was it. He bathed in the 
lagoon at the end of the day’s work and walked up to 


THE REASON FOR BRUCE 


135 


the house through the colonnade of palms with the 
springy step of a gladdened heart. Amber-colored flames 
were tinting the western sky; the declining sun, tamed 
after its dazzling career of the day, could now almost be 
looked at with the human eye. The tall palms seemed 
to be balancing their feathery foliage on the slender stems 
with a magnificent royal poise. It was all as it had been 
every day, yet infinitely gloriously different. He was 
going up to the house by invitation of its master. 

He walked up the veranda steps with a prouder step 
than at any time since he had been on the island. No 
one was visible. He knocked upon the door, but received 
no answer. He pushed it open. 

At the far end of the low-ceiled dim-colored room, 
at the table upon which a single ray of light seemed 
to fall as from a clerestory, sat old Galbraith and Bruce 
McClung, bent and busy over accounts. They had not 
heard him. His pride of a moment earlier ran out of 
him like water and crestfallen as after a dishonorable de¬ 
feat he moved as if to withdraw. But on a sudden the 
old man, facing toward the door, looked up absently. 

“Who’s this?” he called out. “What d’ye want?” 
Bruce also turned and both were now glaring at him as 
they might at an intruding leper. A horrible sensation 
of chill shivered down his spine and then a flush of smok¬ 
ing heat mounted to his face and eyes. 

“ You asked me to come in, sir,” he finally mastered 
himself to stammer, “ about some books — on naviga¬ 
tion.” The old man continued to glare at him for a 
space. Then- 

“ I am engaged! ” he finally shouted in an exasperated 
tone. “ Can’t you see ? ” 

“I — I’m sorry, sir,” Roderic answered briskly, feel¬ 
ing utterly disgraced. “ I-” and he was half out of 




136 


A NEW WORLD 


the door when again old Galbraith shouted, “Wait!” 
And he rose rigidly and went into an inner room. 

Bruce McClung, still staring at him without the change 
of a muscle, finally informed him that it had been a 
“ beautiful day.” 

“ Yes,” murmured Roderic and in his heart at that 
moment was the overpowering desire to rush upon that 
fellow with the sleekness and hypocrisy of a household 
cat, or a supercargo, and dash his head against the floor. 

“ Are you about to study navigation? ” Bruce pursued 
with suave incredulity, as though he were about to ex¬ 
plode with laughter. 

“ Yes — Mr. Galbraith suggested it,” Roderic replied, 
hating himself for speaking civilly to this animal and 
determined that this remark should be his last. 

“ But do you think-” began McClung and then, 

changing the form of his words, declared weightily: 

“ A certain amount of education is necessary.” 

This time Roderic was sufficiently master of himself 
to hold his peace. 

“ You will hardly have time,” McClung continued con¬ 
versationally, with a faint burr to his speech. “ Long 
before you can learn the merest rudiments you will be 
leaving the island. Not much leisure here,” he added, 
with a thin smile playing upon his thin lips. 

Luckily, at that moment Galbraith returned and stalked 
stiffly toward Roderic with two volumes in his quivering 
hand. Then he turned his back coldly upon their 
recipient. 

Roderic murmured something, he hardly knew what, 
and once outside the door he sighed profoundly. The 
outer air was grateful to his hot face. He leaped down 
the steps unconsciously and found himself a few mo¬ 
ments later, lying upon his bamboo couch in the shelter¬ 
ing gloom of his birdcage, breathing heavily, the books 



THE REASON FOR BRUCE 


137 


still clutched in his hand. All the vivid picturing of 
friendliness, equality and intimacy came back like darts 
into his heart. All at once he leaped to his feet, threw 
down the books and shook his fist in the direction of the 
big house. \ 

Henceforth, he told himself, there was war between 
him and them! 

It is notable that of all the web and welter of thoughts 
that now kept weaving their mazy pattern through Rod- 
eric’s brain, there was none of escape, of leaving it all 
behind him, of flying the contempt and insults of those 
two men, even if he had the chance. The dominant pur¬ 
pose in his heart was to struggle, to fight them, to win 
through to a different position in his own esteem if not in 
theirs. For always there was the radiant face of Allene 
before him, with the tender pathos that surrounded her. 
His interests and desires were no longer separable from 
hers. The question in his mind that night, however, 
and in the iridescent day that followed, was to what ex¬ 
tent would she stand by him, cling to him? He had to 
own to himself that in some secret hidden corner of 
his heart he was not absolutely sure of her. Yet with 
an instinctive feeling, be it of perversity or of loyalty, 
he thought and planned as though she were part of 
himself. 

He was now working at the most menial of all oc¬ 
cupations on the island, burning up the copra shell. The 
heat was intense and the heavy smoke, repeatedly blown 
in his face, made his eyes smart and water, so that he 
worked as one weeping over his task. The sense of deg¬ 
radation at the lowliness of his task before the natives 
smoldered in him like a slow fire. He, a white man, 
put to the task of the poorest native or coolie. There 
were few young people on the island. The handful of 
natives consisted mostly of settled men and their families. 


138 


A NEW WORLD 


Nevertheless some of the young, native girls made it, 
he thought, a point to pass him, to gaze at him with 
their large liquid eyes and give him a sympathetic 
“ Yoranna.” 

Nevertheless, his brain never stopped. It raced on with 
a gathering speed and swiftness. It was not in nature 
for him to love old Galbraith and Bruce McClung. But 
he was not wasting time or energy now in hating them. 
The one object for which his hot brain was straining, 
was how to triumph over their brutality. And every 
plan, even the vaguest, included Allene as an integral part 
of it. There was no burning out of the eye of the 
Cyclops. He must needs work by ordinary means avail¬ 
able on the island, where he was now little better than 
a convict laborer. 

His own eyes burned and his heart also. If only he 
could see Allene, or at least have some word of her. But 
nothing came, not so much as a sign. She was invisible 
as though she had left the island. And though the day 
was perfect with the same dazzling sunlight, sapphire 
sky, color and fragrance, yet its magic was dimmed for 
him. Were all things and people flying and forsaking 
him? Was he indeed the outcast that he felt? Was it 
for this that he had fled his too tranquil home, to work 
like a Solomon Island contract laborer at thirty Chili 
dollars a year, — without the dollars ? The next thing 
perhaps they would be lashing him, treating him as he 
had heard of blackbird labor being treated! 

No! Instinctively his head shot up high and his nos¬ 
trils dilated. He must think out his situation coolly. 
He would go to the spring that evening and sit in silence 
away from the precincts of these hateful white men and 
think. There, at any rate, he was himself. If only this 
island were larger, so that he could flee and lose himself 
in it, roam the tangled forest, more kindly than these 


THE REASON FOR BRUCE 


139 


people, subsist like some Crusoe or savage on fruits and 
herbs until such a time as he could find rescue! But the 
few square miles of this so-called high island were almost 
as open as any ring-shaped atoll, some of the character¬ 
istics of which it partook. In any case, however, at the 
spring was refuge. 

The dip in the lagoon at the end of that longest of days 
seemed to possess an unusual significance. It seemed to 
cleanse him inwardly of some of the sooty, sordid emo¬ 
tions that had been tarnishing his soul almost as much 
as it cleansed the outer grime and soothed the blood. 

Mechanically, unconscious of a sense of taste, he de¬ 
voured his supper which came, as always, in one dish, — 
fried bananas, the usual vegetables, fish wrapped in ti 
leaves, a mango fruit, a jug of water and nothing else. 
It was not Akura that brought it, but a limping native 
youth, unfit for hardier labor, who worked as a sort of 
general coolie about the house. They gave each other 
“ Yoranna,” but had no further speech. ‘‘ My next job,” 
thought Roderic sardonically, “ to valet the woodpile and 
eat with the natives in the cook house.” He now re¬ 
membered the word incommunicado in connection 
with prisoners and understood its meaning. 

Once he had bolted his food he left the birdcage and 
with seeming carelessness sauntered up to the spring. 

There are moods in which thought is so frantic as 
it beats violently against the hard and narrow boundaries 
of the skull, that for all its activity no channel or trace 
of it remains in the brain. All that walk of his up 
the slope was filled with such wild cogitations, so that 
when he found himself sitting on the slope by the spring, 
he scarcely knew how he had come there. He remem¬ 
bered leaving his house and now he was here. The in¬ 
tervening space was a blank. But now, in the leafy gloom 
of the one spot on the island that held associations of 


140 A NEW WORLD 

happiness, he breathed more freely and reflected more 
clearly. 

“ They are trying to devil me into doing something 
shameful and rotten,” he told himself, “ something that 
would stamp me as the thing they are trying to make 
me, a low type of beach comber, a pariah and an out¬ 
cast. In that way all they can do against me and more 
would seem too good for me.” But — before whom? 
he asked himself. This was such a tiny world. He was 
not such a fool, however, as to fail to apprehend that 
the world is all of one texture, macrocosm and microcosm. 
They would degrade him before the natives, before 
Allene, before their own black consciences. And the 
youthful heart in him, in its first clash with life and the 
obscure tortuous motives that move it, bitterly cried out in 
rebellion, “ Why? Why?” 

The past came slipping back to him, as the past always 
will in moments of weakness. He saw the home of his 
boyhood and the well-ordered life made for him by 
others, ignoring his silent inner life, to be sure, but 
punctiliously careful of his outer. The chill abstraction 
of his father, the purblind fussiness of his stepmother, 
the great tranquillity, the absence of the sting and zest 
of life, now troubled him with a melancholy self-pity. 
He had been, in a manner, surrounded. It had been a 
dull existence. Here he was alone, despised if not sus¬ 
pected; for all the fairneSs and innocence of his inten¬ 
tions treated almost as a convict. To them he was a 
thief come out of the night. 

But abruptly he threw back his shoulders and cast off 
his creeping mood of self-pity. He had thirsted for life, 
he told himself, and life was meeting him more than half¬ 
way. The sting and zest of it! It was here and now. 
The past, he dimly felt, only dragged at the wheels of 


THE REASON FOR BRUCE 


141 


existence while seeming to lighten them. He must meet 
his problems and fate in the spirit of the present. 

Those two men had no desire for visitors to their small 
world and here was one thrust upon them. He did not 
believe he could behave in that manner to any human 
being, but no matter of that. It was still some months 
before the schooner would take him back to Papeete, 

and in the meanwhile- Ah, if he could only consult 

with Allene! He experienced a sharper and more 
poignant longing for her than was constantly with him 
and it seemed he could not bear another hour to pass 
without seeing her. 

And that sharp longing seemed to intensify and solidify 
the loneliness that encompassed him. The island became 
a solitary wilderness, remote, alien, and in every shadow 
of the surrounding jungle was lurking a strange hostility. 
As the darkness descended sharply with the soft caress¬ 
ing quality of its mystery, he felt himself stark and alone 
against a velvet curtain that hid unknown threats and 
menace. 

On a sudden his uneasy reverie was broken as by a glow 
of soft light. 

Allene was approaching — Allene, with a footfall soft 
as the night itself, without a sound. He leaped to his 
feet and seized her outstretched hands. The exquisite 
tenderness in her eyes he could see, even in that newborn 
darkness, and at once all the solitude and menace receded 
into nothingness. 

“ Allene — darling,” he murmured, as he drew her to 
him with trembling arms, and a host of foolish words 
that he did not know he could utter rippled forth in a cas¬ 
cade from his lips. The alien quality of his life was an 
absurd dream. A deep happiness now dwelt in his heart. 
This was home! 

Tacitly they moved to the flat stone by the spring, 



142 


A NEW WORLD 


and as she sat close to him with his arms about her, a 
kindling flame in his blood seemed to burn out all petty 
fears and sordid tribulations. How splendidly brave and 
strong he suddenly felt standing beside Allene. What 
a strange, winelike potency that girl possessed! 

To be bereft of her now was less conceivable to him 
than death itself. But Allene was silent and serious and 
that troubled him. 

“ Tell me, darling,” he paused, what’s wrong? Why 
are you so quiet — so sad?” Allene sighed deeply. 

• “ Oh, they have been so cruel and horrid to you — it 
makes me ill,” she sadly murmured. Then with a sud¬ 
den passion she quivered in his arms. I can’t bear it 
— ah, I can’t bear it! ” And his cheek was suddenly wet 
with her hot tears. 

‘‘ Oh, that-” he muttered soothingly, ‘‘ that’s 

nothing! ” And he was truthfully sincere in declaring the 
triviality of that which a few hours or a few epochs be¬ 
fore had made him suffer and smart so poignantly. Was 
not Allene close to him — in his arms ? 

‘‘Nothing!” she murmured dazedly. “Why, what 
else is there? It’s the most dreadful thing of all — 
awful!” 

And now he understood that no slight or insult on the 
part of the two hostile white men weighed down his 
heart one-hundredth part so much as the words of Bruce 
McClung about his “leaving the island.” This trivial 
jot of land was now the world, and the threat of expul¬ 
sion from it — and from the girl beside him — was the 
threat of abysmal doom. He could not help marvelling 
for an instant at the sudden bright clarity of what a little 
before had been so chaotically dark and confused. 

The burning stars overhead, preternaturally large and 
brilliant, seemed to flash down a message of confidence 
and truth. There must be no half-measures, no conceal- 



THE REASON FOR BRUCE 


143 


ments with a girl like Allene. He must tell her everything 
and plan everything with her. 

“ What else is there? ” he repeated finally. “ There is 
really only one thing, darling. All the rest is of no ac¬ 
count.” And with the utterance of those words which 
seemed abruptly to nullify the sordid persecutions and 
the petty spites of Galbraith and Bruce, he felt with a 
delighted shock of astonishment that they were actually 
nullified. They were suddenly small and remote, insig¬ 
nificant. The oneness with Allene, so close and warm 
beside him, part of him, made him tower inwardly and 
outwardly above them while they had shrivelled to the 
size of hornets. 

And never again did he lose this position as regarded 
these two men, the position that love had suddenly be¬ 
stowed upon him. 

He thrilled with the immensity of the beauty of that 
which he could not have then expressed in words to save 
his soul. Tenderly, as though afraid that surge of new¬ 
born strength might crush her fragility, he pressed Allene 
to him with the finest emotion he had yet experienced in 
life. 

“ Only one thing is troubling me,” he spoke with a new 
tremulous confidence against her lips. “ It was when 
Bruce spoke to-day about — of my leaving the island.” 

“ Oh! — no, no! That couldn’t be! ” she gasped as 
if wrung by pain. 

“ That may be months off. But months or years, that 
is the one thing I cannot face. I can’t leave you now, 
darling, and I can’t go without you.” 

“ No, no! ” she uttered in a stifled cry and her arms 
tightened about his neck. I’d rather die! ” He thrilled 
from head to foot in the glowing pride of her great love. 

“ The question is,” he pursued with hardly achieved 
calmness, “ what can we do about it. I only know I 


144* 


A NEW WORLD 


cannot leave you. I can understand your father feeling 
the way he does,” he suddenly added, with something hot 
and sharp rankling inside him. “ But why has Bruce this 
terrific anxiety to get me away? ” 

“ Oh, Roderic dear,” she cried low and piteously, 
“ don’t you understand ? He — he wants to marry me.” 

A shock like a sudden blow across the chest struck 
speech in him silent for an instant. A chill fury seemed 
to fill all the spaces of his bosom. 

“ Marry — you! ” he finally cried out aghast. That 
.— Bruce? ” The pretensions of Bruce for marriage with 
Allene — his Allene, that he had dreamed of, carried in 
his heart for an eternity — suddenly appeared as the most 
revolting, monstrous, sacrilegious thing he had ever heard 
of! Whatever he might have fancied or suspected here¬ 
tofore, the stark fact now bold and naked before him 
seemed like some hideous deformity that sent a shudder 
through him. It was unthinkable! Then a rush of blood 
that lent a tinge of red even to the dark tenebrous tangle 
of the forest about him shook him with a fiery rage. 

“ Marry you? He repeated with clenched jaws that 
would scarcely allow him to speak, so hard-gripped were 
they by anger. “ I’ll kill him first! ” 

“ Oh, no, dear — don’t say that! ” she murmured, but 
she clung to him even more passionately than before. 
“ We must find some other way.” 

“ Other way — other way,” he repeated mechanically. 

“ What other way is there, when no ships ever come 
here — and they have the schooner — and the whole 
island is about four square miles? ” 

“ It is larger than that,” she mournfully corrected him. 
“You see, it is shaped like a bird flying. You came over 
the narrow part of it. But out there and she waved her 
hand gently to the right and left, it stretches quite a way. 
There are white cliffs at the tips — and caves.” 


THE REASON FOR BRUCE 


145 


The geography of the island, however, even when im¬ 
parted by Allene, had only a perfunctory interest for 
him at that moment. 

“ But tell me, Allene,” he demanded feverishly, “ does 
your father know that he — that Bruce — wants to marry 
you?” He could barely utter the hateful words. 

“ Oh, goose that you are, dear; of course he knows! 
It was father that arranged it. Can you imagine me 
wanting it?” 

“ But how could he? ” he exclaimed passionately with 
the unconscious egotism of youth and love that reduced 
the rival to a creature of the slime. 

“ Don’t you see, Roderic? he thinks Bruce is safe. He 
is a connection — of the family — and father thinks he 
has such a strong, steady character. And that I am light 
and fanciful — as he thinks my mother was. I am very 
much like her. And Bruce is safe — he studied for the 
ministry, you see — and — in that way — he thinks I’ll 
be safe. He brought Bruce out here for that purpose. 
Taught him navigation and everything — so he can hand 
over the island to him. Bruce has a strange influence on 
him. That is why they are so beastly to you — afraid you 
might spoil it all. ” 

“ The island and — and you! My God! ” he cried with 
sudden suppressed vehemence. “ So that’s the combina¬ 
tion we have to fight 1 ” 

I told you that I’ll sooner die than marry him.” 

Her words possessed a wonderful power and exercised 
a marvelous effect. The mist before his eyes cleared 
away. His blood seemed quickly to take on a new and 
a steadier rh)d;hm. 

“ Very well,” he said, then they’ll have to carry me 
off the island. You and I belong to each other. Don’t 
we, darling? ” he bent his eyes to hers and held her gently, 
with great tenderness. 


146 


A NEW WORLD 


Her answer was her soft warm lips upon his. 

Allene’s kiss had potent magical properties. It had 
the power of wiping out perplexity and despair, of mak¬ 
ing his wrists tremulous like a child’s, of sending a sweet 
delirium through his blood, that changed it into a current 
of soft ethereal delight. 

When he emerged from the delicious trance he was 
both wildly happy and sad. But he was not despondent. 

“ Four or five months,” he whispered, “ is a long time. 
We’ll find some way out. And you are mine,” he buried 
■ his lips in her fragrant hair, “ all mine.” 

‘‘ All yours,” she breathed and the dark interlacing 
greenery, faintly starlit, was a temple for the most heav¬ 
enly emotions of earth. Theirs was the state of absolute 
perfection of sheer being. 

On a sudden they were startled by a low laugh and 
voices, words indistinguishable, faint and receding. With 
intense attention and wildly throbbing pulses they listened 
for a space. A rustle of leaves down the slope was all 
they could hear. 

Allene rose to her feet and Roderic, his arm still about 
her, rose with her. 

“ Who do you think it was ? ” he whispered in her ear. 
But she laid a finger on his lips and cautioned him to 
silence. 

Softly she stole down with no more sound than a 
zephyr as far as the bougainvillea vine and with a gesture 
bade him not to follow her. He stood riveted like a statue 
of stone, but with every sense alert, his blood pounding 
in his ears. 

Allene was peering downward, intently vigilant, like 
some highly organized forest creature that at a sound 
becomes all watchfulness. She stood thus for perhaps 
thirty seconds, then came softly gliding back to him. 


THE REASON FOR BRUCE 147 

No further sound reached them. They stood still for an 

instant, facing one another. Then- 

Who was it? ” he whispered, laying his hands on her 
slender shoulders. She shook her head mutely. 

“ I don’t know,” finally came her answering whisper. 
“ But I think it’s the boy in the cook house, Hupee, and 

Tetua the housemaid. Yet, I don’t know-” she 

added, perplexed. “ I didn’t think she would be — walk¬ 
ing with him. She makes fun of him — because of his 
limp.” 

“ That wouldn’t make any difference,” he replied, with 
a sudden maturity of wisdom. In a flash he remembered 
the time on the ship when he thought he held Allene in 
contempt. “Are they your friends?” he demanded. 

“ Ye-es,” she answered dubiously. “But — not like 
Akura. They don’t know about — about you and me.” 

“ Ah! ” he could have slain those two innocent natives 
then for not being the abject, devoted slaves of Allene, 
blindly servile in all her interests. 

“ Do you think they saw us? ” he queried. 

“ I think very likely,” she said. 

“ Would they-” and he paused. This kind of 

skulking revolted him. 

“ Oh, I don’t know — I don’t know,” she spoke with 
nervous rapidity, now genuinely disturbed, and she leaned 
abruptly against a tree trunk. “ But I must run down at 
once and see Akura. If they know, she can stop their 
mouths.” 

“ I’ll go with you.” 

“ No! — please, dear, stay here. Don’t start back until 
I am at least halfway down. 

Down the slope, as Roderic walked cautiously in the 
wake of Allene, voices were audible. Through the tangle 
against the shade of the canebrake where the path ran, 
Allene was invisible. But he distinctly heard the voices. 





148 


A NEW WORLD 


What had happened? His throat was parched with 
anger and anxiety. Soon enough he knew what had 
happened. While strolling about in the vicinity of the 
house in search of Allene, whose absence had been dis¬ 
covered by Galbraith, Bruce had met the two natives 
coming down from the hill. In answer to a query, they 
informed him innocently enough that they had seen Allene 
by the spring. That she was with the white young tane 
who had been shipwrecked, — and tj^ey laughed. Bruce 
thereupon had come forward and met Allene halfway 
down the path. 


I 


CHAPTER XIII 

AN ACCIDENT 

i ^ 

The low bank of whitening clouds the next morning 
soon gave way before the climbing sun. They thinned 
to dazzling snowiness, dissolved and disappeared before 
the same everlasting brilliance that a fall of rain in this 
region only enhances and intensifies. Nevertheless, the 
virgin day seemed acutely charged with dread and omen. 

Roderic had slept little that night, so heated had been 
his brain in revolving over and over the events and the 
intelligence of the previous evening. The tenderness and 
sweet attachment of Allene! The time for drift and 
waiting upon circumstances was definitely past. Quick 
unfaltering action was now imperatively necessary. But 
no definite plan emerged. His mind was like a bird beat- 
ing its wings in a cage, with a maddening lack of result. 
All that day Allene had been invisible. 

Towards the following midnight, as he lay on his cot 
in the birdcage, he heard a roar out on the reef that 
stirred him to jump up and peer out. The heavens were 
black. All the stars had vanished. The dark surface 
of the lagoon seemed in a tumult and soon the sound, 
drawing swiftly nearer, broke into a squall of terrific 
rain that for the time of its duration made the Biblical 
deluge a mere drizzle. It swept into his birdcage as 
though the thing were made of illusion. He pulled his cot 
to the center under the thatch, but nevertheless his shelter 
was soon drenched and when he succeeded in lighting his 


150 


A NEW WORLD 


candle, he saw hundreds of moths and insects in great 
variety, clinging overhead until the tropic downpour 
should restore their liberty. He extinguished his candle 
and lay still under his dampening mat, immensely solitary, 
longing intensely for the dawn and the new brightness. 
Only with the cessation of the rain that lasted for hours 
did he fall asleep. 

The first thing he heard upon presenting himself at 
the copra-shed the next morning was an order from 
Galbraith, transmitted by Orui, to lend a hand at the 
loading of the schooner. 

The schooner was going out! The schooner that had 
so recently returned, that normally was not to go for 
nearly five months, was again to make the voyage to 
Papeete! 

This he intuitively understood to mean only one thing. 
It was as though Bruce or Galbraith or both had said 
to him there and then in so many words : 

“ We cannot any longer have you on this island — you 
well know why. And since we can’t throw you into the 
sea, being humane and civilized white men, we must pay 
the penalty of our consideration, make this unnecessary 
and costly trip to Papeete, ship you off to the devil and 
so definitely and finally get rid of you.” 

His knees, in the expressive Homeric phrase, were 
loosened. He hoped that Orui did not perceive the quiver 
that passed over his entire body nor any change upon his 
features. He turned away. So deep was his consterna¬ 
tion that he laughed, almost hysterically. Whereupon 
Orui also laughed. 

To this day Roderic does not know whether they were 
laughing at the same thing. Orui was a wise old savage 
in his way. But Roderic was uncertain as to why his own 
bitter laughter came at that moment. It may be that some 
echo of something he had heard or read came to him just 


AN ACCIDENT 


151 


then, bringing a flash of memory, the image of a prisoner, 
by the refinement of cruelty, ordered to erect his own 
gibbet. But that impression may have come later. 

He was. Heaven knows, intent upon no levity at that 
time and his brain had never worked more feverishly, 
albeit with small result. But through all the racing of his 
mind, through the fiery anger and rapid succession of 
wild hopes, half-formed plans, a ferocity of struggle 
with desponding blackness that kept descending to be 
again and again fought oif, something in his mind like 
a calm detached person talking to a player at solitaire, 
kept insistently repeating with a fiendishly common¬ 
place iteration: 

‘‘ So you want Allene, do you, Mr. Bruce? Well, you 

are not going to have her, my fine fellow-you are 

not going to have her — as true as God made you! — 
You are not going to have her! ” 

His seemingly unguided hands were at the work upon 
the copra trays, drying frantically in the sun against mil¬ 
dew and this hurried shipment. His brain was preoc¬ 
cupied with a hundred thoughts. But always the aloof 
jovial dweller in his skull, that seemed stronger than 
he, infinitely more masterful than Bruce or Galbraith, or 
than any one else upon the island, was coolly assuring 
‘‘ Mr. Bruce ” that his hopes were vain. For all that, 
however, there was a febrile underlying pain. What 
if no reprieve should come, — if no plan or solution 
should be forthcoming? 

As the morning wore on and the tide receded, so that 
the rush and gurgle of waters at the opening in the 
reef could be heard across the lagoon, as a noisy obligato 
to one’s thoughts, Roderic could see the little schooner 
at the pierhead, with brown bodies in the water about 
her, scraping her rising sides free of sea green and bar¬ 
nacles. It sent a nameless pang through him, as though 



152 A NEW WORLD v 

his heart had missed a beat. Bruce was overseeing the 
work. 

Unconsciously Roderic paused in his labor at the 
copra and became absorbed in the operations at the pier. 
More acutely than ever he felt that the preparation of his 
own gibbet was in train. Orui also had paused in his 
garrulity and when Roderic turned, he found the old 
man’s large mild eyes upon him. Abruptly Orui began 
to discourse of miracles. 

“ Tapeni Brucee,” he announced, “ he tell us mirakers 
no happen to-day, because we wicked. Only in old times 
they happen. I thinka mirakers can happen to-day all 
same. What you thinka?” 

“ I think so too,” Roderic answered absently. 

‘‘ Do much mirakers happen America? ” 

“ They happen every day,” was the answer in the same 
tone. Then abruptly, “ But what makes you ask that, 
Orui?” 

“ I ask,” said Orui, “ because I think a mirakers can 
happen anywhere. They can happa on this island.” 

“ Yes, I guess they can, Orui.” 

“To smart fellah-man, who know how to want things, 
they can happa,” Orui declared sententiously. “ But him 
fellah must want miraker hard-damn hard.” 

“ Look here, Orui,” demanded Roderic, with a sudden 
shrewd suspicion. “ What is it you mean ? What are 
you driving at? ” 

The old man displayed confusion and rambled off into 
a long tale familiar to island legend, — a miracle that 
two lovers compassed when pursued by their enemies. 
They dived into the lagoon and disappeared seemingly 
for good. They never came up again, so that their 
enemies gave up pursuit. But what those lovers did was 
to swim into the subaqueous opening of a cave in the 
coral cliffs and, once above water level, they worked their 



AN ACCIDENT 


153 


way upward along the tunnel of that cave anciently hol¬ 
lowed by the sea and there they lived in bliss until their 
enemies had departed. The burden of the old islander’s 
fable was that miracles are to the resourceful and those 
who love greatly. 

“ Aue! Aue! ” The sharp wailing cry, in the voice 
of pain, suddenly came from the old Orui. Roderic, 
who had been listening without looking at him through 
the last part of the legend, wheeled about sharply. Orui 
sat crumpled up on the ground. A heavy copra tray 
with its outer lining of metal sheeting, had slipped out 
of his hands, the while he was fabling, fallen with the 
sharp edge upon his right foot and cut an ugly gash 
across it. The precious copra was spilled all about and 
blood was streaming from the wounded foot. 

Quickly Roderic tore a portion of his own shirt at 
the bottom, made a rough bandage over the lacerated 
part and proceeded to help the old man to rise. But 
Orui could stand up on only one foot. He was unable 
to walk. 

‘‘ Very well,” said Roderic, then I’ll carry you.” 

‘‘Where you carry me?” inquired the old man with 
doglike eyes, and the pathetic gratitude of the native. 

“ I’ll carry you up to the house — to get some medi¬ 
cine.” At the world “ house ” Orui made a wry face 
— glanced at the scattered copra and shook his head. 

“ You can’t carry me,” he protested weakly. 

“ I can and I will.” 

And carefully Roderic loaded the old man like a sack 
upon his shoulders and set forth heavily up the beach. 
Orui was no light burden. He was indeed a staggering 
load, and his moans of deprecating protest seemed to 
make him heavier. But Roderic toiled on with him 
toward the house, almost glad of this diversion from his 
own tormenting thoughts. Slowly, ponderously, he 


154 


A NEW WORLD 


swung into the avenue of the tapering palms and as he 
glanced up toward the house, he wondered whether he 
was approaching it for the last time. 

A wild hope flooded him that old Galbraith might be 
absent, that only Allene and Akura might be there to 
minister to Orui, and that he might have a secret hurried 
consultation with the object of all the tumult of thoughts 
that assailed him, — a fortunate chance that might settle 
everything. And as though all had been satisfactorily 
arranged, he actually had a vision of the schooner de¬ 
parting without him, as he watched her from the beach. 

“ What the devil are you doing there! ” rang out like 
a shrill bark from the veranda. It had the effect upon 
Roderic of a shattering detonation. He paused with his 
burden and looked up. 

Old Galbraith, in white drill trousers and a yellow shirt 
open at the throat, his long bare neck protruding like a 
vulture’s, was bending forward rigidly and his face was 
brick-red with anger. 

“ I am bringing up Orui,” Roderic, with a calmness 
that surprised him, answered quietly. 

“What’s this?-What for?” barked the old man, 

his face all but smoking with angry heat. 

“ He was hurt — a copra tray fell and mashed his 
foot.” 

“ Damnation! ” cried the old man, moving agitatedly 
along the veranda railing. “ And who’s at the copra- 
shed ? Put him down here! Bring him to the steps and 
put him down, I tell you! ” he yelled as though beside 
himself. Roderic moved slowly up the steps and gently 
deposited his burden on the topmost of them. 

“ Now get back to the shed! ” raged Galbraith. “ Get 
back this minute! Want to do all the damage you can 
before the island is rid of you? Get back on the run, 
ye vile idiot!-Back! ” 




AN ACCIDENT 


155 


From now on, he told himself, any compunction in his 
heart regarding Galbraith on the score of his being Al- 
lene’s father was completely at an end. To leave Allene 
alone in her father’s hands was to leave her in the hands 
of a madman. 

Bruce, who at his vantage point on the pierhead had 
observed that something out of the ordinary was going 
on near the house, came walking swiftly toward Roderic 
and met him halfway down the avenue, at the point 
where Roderic was turning off toward the shed. 

“What’s up?” he demanded brusquely. “What’s 
happened? What are you doing here? ” 

Roderic answered him briefly. 

The leader of himene singing swore a round oath. 
Then- 

“ Hurry up! ” he ordered, snarling. “ Run back! The 
copra will be ruined. I’ll be there. Be quick about it! 
Damn your stupid hide!-Run! ” 

Roderic’s fist doubled involuntarily. Red anger- 
tinged the landscape for an instant. Tapena Bruce may 
or may not have realized how near he had come to grief 
at that moment. But on a sudden with the dash of a 
sprinter he shot forward and past Roderic, a streak of 
white in a line toward the house. 

“ This will be waiting for you! ” muttered Roderic 
after him, and at a swinging though not unusual pace 
he strode back to the shed. And never afterward did he 
care to reflect upon what was at that moment in his 
breast. 




CHAPTER XIV 


THIRTY-SIX HOURS 

I can still see the Roderic of the thirty-six hours that 
followed walking through a vibrant blankness, a tumul¬ 
tuous darkness that may conceivably describe the state 
of a condemned man in the dragging, miserable hours 
before his execution, but only faintly. For is not death 
after all a relief and a respite? 

I do not remember whether he called upon the god of 
lovers or upon any god to succor him in the despairing 
blackness that was settling upon him. I do remember, 
or believe I remember, that in the most despondent hours 
a certain faint light of hope still burned in his heart. How 
dimly soever, I vow it still burned. A peculiar eye-filling 
laughter chokes me at those rare times when I recall the 
singular wraithlike condition in which that Roderic 
walked about the island during those menacing hours. 
He was not precisely an automaton; he was a corpse 
walking, moving, laboring, — a corpse, but no one knew 
it. 

He touched no food that day or the next, but drank 
of water copiously. He spoke to no one for fear lest 
his voice should betray his state. Indeed, he was afraid 
at times a gust of wind might crumble and scatter him 
into his essential dust. 

He had ceased from calling down Biblical curses upon 
the two men who were so urgently contriving his doom. 
All thoughts of hatred or revenge left him, as too trivial 


THIRTY-SIX HOURS 


157 


or futile. Only one bitterness seemed to bum and 
smolder and flame again in the very center of his being: 

No word of any sort, — nothing from Allene! Could 
she possibly acquiesce? Could she be so weak and ir¬ 
resolute? A thousand times he would ask himself these 
questions and again and again sweep them away with a 
fierce indignant negative. 

No and-No and-No! 

Allene was being watched. Her heart was cruelly 
wrung, not a doubt of it I But that vulture-like old man 
and the smirking hypocritical younger were holding her 
prisoner until they could pack him off aboard the 
schooner. Days and ages of suspense; eons of inter¬ 
minable blackness! How like a fox he scurried the night 
of Orui’s accident, creeping on all fours through the 
shadows of the garden, and then running at top speed 
up the slope to the stone by the pool! But he knew in 
his thumping heart that his quest would be vain, and it 
was vain. No sign or message from Allene. Allene was 
as though she had been suddenly blotted out of existence. 

And still the dim hope flickered faintly in the tortured 
breast. I declare in all sincerity that when the order of 
doom finally came the next day, when this animated 
shadow that was Roderic was curtly ordered by Bruce 
to sleep on board the schooner that night with the Kana¬ 
kas, against the early departure with the tide before 
dawn — when Roderic was actually moving toward the 
schooner without having had sight or sound of Allene, 
hope in his bosom burned inexplicably brighter than ever 
before during those two dreadful days 1 




CHAPTER XV 


FUGITIVES 

Once on the schooner’s deck, which was already peopled 
by the laughing, chattering brown mariners, looking for¬ 
ward to their visit to the capitol of the islands, Roderic 
approached them, gave them the usual “Yoranna,” which 
they cheerfully returned, walked slowly back from the 
foremast to the mainmast and sank down with his back 
against it. It was not to be expected that the white 
man would join them. His aloofness was wholly normal. 
A single lantern in the crosstrees gave all the illumina- 
sion there was on board, a mere dim dot of light. 

A droning undertone, speaking in his head, was lugu¬ 
briously sounding words vaguely remembered and ritually 
connected with mortality. 

Naked, or all but naked, he had come here, and 
naked he was returning. He had come with lacerated 
flesh and now his spirit was more cruelly torn than ever 
flesh could be. But, oddly, those words and those 
fancies seemed to be floating around him, or if inside 
him, very close to the periphery and surface of him. 
The inner and intimate self of him, a whole island, a 
solid continent surrounded by these dark troublous 
waters, was alert, alive, of a massive integrity, permeated 
by quite another idea, an intense, intuitive consciousness. 

He was not going with the schooner! The schooner 
might sail when and where it would. A dozen Bruces 
and a score of Galbraiths might plan and plot and con- 


FUGITIVES 


159 


trive. He was stronger than they. A powerful current 
seemed to be vibrating in him and from him to Allene, — 
a direct line between them. His conviction amounted to 
an absolute certainty that Allene was thinking likewise, 
permeated by exactly the same thought. She was in¬ 
tensely believing in him! 

Fitful gusts of loneliness, nevertheless, descended on 
him at moments, seemingly from the soft encircling 
night, from the multitude of glowing stars, so brilliant, 
so numerous, yet so aloof. Stars somehow are never 
intimate, never inspiring to intimacy. Their only in¬ 
fluence is to make one feel infinitesimally small and help¬ 
less. But this balm they carry and rain down: other 
men are no less infinitesimally small, insignificant. 

The waters of the lagoon were gently lapping against 
the side of the newly cleaned ship. The voices of the 
Paumotans forward were gradually silenced. When 
Roderic rose up noiselessly behind the mast, he saw an 
amorphous, grotesquely shaped, darker shadow where 
those men lay sprawling asleep. Softly he crept back to 
the starboard after-railing, slipped between the bars and 
dropped to the planking of the pier. With less noise than 
a cat would have made, he walked stealthily up the pier 
to the beach. No voice challenged him, no sound was 
heard as he moved through the mellow darkness and, once 
his feet touched the still warm sand of the beach, a pro¬ 
found sigh escaped him. He turned, startled, to see 
whence it came and then smiled at himself with com¬ 
pressed lips. 

Resolutely, without a tremor of doubt, he struck up 
the slope on the Galbraith side of the stream and as 
though a long-arranged unquestioned appointment were 
prompting him, made his way in the direction of the 
house. Abreast of the house, he paused for a space, 
looking with an intense magnetic longing through the 


160 


A NEW WORLD 


walls, as it were, to Allene within, as though wondering 
why she did not penetrate them and come floating to him 
through the air. Again a faint doubt assailed him, but 
only for an instant. With an effort he turned his gaze, 
away firmly from the dark, slumbering house and sped 
on with a secret haste toward the spring. The shadows 
of the puraos and breadfruit trees absorbed him as some 
great black sponge might draw in a drop of water. But 
his feet were sure in that velvet darkness. 

Once at the spring he stood still, breathing hard, his 
eyes roaming in a nameless search through that dark 
world of tangled foliage that very faintly began to de¬ 
fine itself. Why, it suddenly flashed through his throb¬ 
bing brain, had he come here? But the query no sooner 
presented itself than it vanished. He had come because 
it was the only thing to do. Now he must think swiftly, 
surely, without a flaw. He sank down upon the stone 
and mechanically laid his hands upon its surface on 
either side of him. It was cool and infinitely friendly, 
— his dearest friend upon the island, not counting 
Allene. 

But for thought came only the image of Allene. Her 
lithe, willowy figure, her face of a beauty now preter- 
naturally etherealized, her deep and candid sincerity, — 
all were so vivid before him that involuntarily he held 
out his arms to the dark encompassing vacancy. And 
strangely enough, he saw her in a flowing garment with 
her shimmering hair down in a fragrant mist, cloudlike, 
about her transfigured countenance, floating through the 
air! He had assuredly never seen her so before. And 
once he could swear he heard her voice with tears in it 
calling “ Roderic! ” Was she dead? Oh, no! And he 
shuddered. 

Again and again his effort at planning, at concentrated 
thought, would fall inert before this image of Allene, 


FUGITIVES 


161 


her star-eyed pallor, the floating misty aureole of her 
hair, her flowing garment and her outstretched arms. 
No, he had never seen her hair like this, unbound. Yet, 
why- ? 

On a sudden he leaped from the stone like a startled 
savage or an animal at bay. What was that ? A sound, 
like the swishing of twigs among the underbrush below, 
perhaps a bird or a fruit-pigeon slipping from its perch 
in a tree with a flutter of wings? 

Pursuit! That one thought like a shot blotted out all 
other impressions in the next sound. A figure, a white 
figure, dimly defined itself, — or were his eyes betraying 
him? Involuntarily he bounded forward. Yes!- 

“ My God! ” he whispered hoarsely. “ It’s Allene. 
Oh, my darling 1 I knew you’d come 1 ” And he folded 
her in his arms as her own outstretched ones fell about 
his shoulders and her head with a sob sank against his 
throat. 

How long they stood there enwrapt, neither of them 
knew or cared. For Roderic, at all events, all plans and 
purposes, throbbing longings and ages of desperate yearn¬ 
ings seemed to be fulfilled and accomplished. All pain 
was stilled and dead before the supreme fact that once 
again he was holding the beloved figure of Allene in his 
arms. Was it really she, or only the phantasmal image 
of her of his earlier picturings? The fragrance and 
the warmth of her against his breast permeated him and 
he found himself crooning and murmuring over her in a 
voice that was strangely unfamiliar to him. 

‘‘ But tell me, darling: how did you know I was here? ” 

“ Oh, Roderic, dear, it’s been filling my mind like a 
shout for the past hours. ' He’s there and you must 
go to him! ’ I was waiting till they should go to bed 
and be sound asleep.” 




162 


A NEW WORLD 


For the past three hours! he reflected; even while he 
was yet aboard the schooner! 

“ How did you get out of the house, dearest? ” 

“ I slipped out of my window to the veranda and came 
right here,” she answered simply. “ I didn’t even think 
whether I was making a noise or not. I could not think.” 
Exactly his own experience I 

Neither could I!” .He gloried exultingly. “The 
only thought in my head was that I could not leave you. 
Everything seemed possible except to go away from you.” 

“ Oh, Roderic,” she cried, with a little catch in her 
voice, “ do you really love me — as much as that ? ” 

“ Only some millions of times more than my own life 
or than anything else on earth,” he answered with the 
delicious serious readiness with which young lovers can 
say such things. She kissed him tremulously for that 
and the cloud of her hair, unbound, precisely as in his 
vision of a little while ago, brushed his face. “ I sup¬ 
pose,” he added with a blissful recklessness, “ they’ll 
try to kill me if they can’t catch me, but I don’t care, my 
darling,” he gripped her closely. “I don’t care! You 
are with me now! ” 

“ Oh, they! ” she retorted with a contempt that sur¬ 
prised and delighted him. “ Then they’ll have to 
kill me too — but they won’t. But now we had better 
plan what to do, dearest.” 

Gently, still entranced, he led her to the stone. What 
she was wearing he could not precisely tell, save that it 
was soft and white. But over it she wore a light-colored 
cloak, sometimes called a polo coat, such as he had seen 
her wear on the Alice. And her hair! That image of 
her his fevered fancy had conjured up! That touch of 
mystery awed and puzzled him like a miracle. Then, 
on a sudden, he remembered Orui’s words concerning the 


FUGITIVES 163 

miracles that might happen to great and resourceful 
lovers. 

Tensely, in a low murmur, as he seated her and drew 
her cloak more closely about her, he repeated the words 
of Orui to her, mentioning the legend of the lovers’ 
cave that inspired them. 

“ Orui is perfectly right,” she answered with a warm 
gentle gravity. “Why not? Isn’t it more of a miracle 
that you are you and I am I and that we love each other 
as we do ? ” 

Where do women as young and inexperienced as Al- 
lene get their profound wisdom., he inwardly marvelled? 

“ You darling baby,” he whispered against her cheek. 
“ You talk as if you had lived a thousand lives.” 

“ Perhaps I have,” she whispered in response. Then 
“ Oh! ” and on a sudden she beat her forehead with the 
palm of her open hand. 

“What’s the matter?” 

“Why didn’t I think of it before?” she demanded of 

herself. “The caves!-Oh, I’m so stupid. I came 

only because I had to come-to be with you. But 

the caves! Of course!-Oh, Roderic, confess you 

only told me that story to remind me. You are so 
clever, you see! ” 

“What do you mean, darling? Tell me,” he pressed 
her with his encircling arms and taking quite for granted 

the imputation of wisdom in her words. “ Tell me,- 

quick! ” 

“ Didn’t I tell you that there are caves in the cliffs-- 

at the tips of the wings? I forget. So much has hap¬ 
pened-” She now talked in a delicious breathy 

whisper, like a child with a secret in one’s ear, yet with 
the urgency of a passionate woman protecting her love. 
He listened rapt in a sense of worship. 








164 


A NEW WORLD 


‘‘ Yes, you did, dearest-’’ he answered mechanic¬ 
ally, -“ which wings 

“ The islands’ wings. It’s shaped like a bird flying, 
you know. Oh, I have told you, only you’ve forgotten. 
There’s one cave on our side of the island and two or 
three on the native side. Only nobody ever goes there. 
The natives think they are filled with ghosts. Way off 
there.” She waved her hand to the right. “ You could 
go there by keeping almost straight to the right. The 
lagoon is very narrow there; they don’t even go there 
to fish. The land falls as you go down from here and 
it becomes soft, almost swampy. Then it slopes up again. 
There is a mammea fruit plantation right where it be¬ 
gins to rise. I once went that far with Akura. I made 
her take me. But she wouldn’t go as far as the caves. 
But I saw them afterwards from a boat with father. 
He was rowing round.” 

“ Then that’s where I must go,” Roderic took her up 
eagerly. But on a sudden desolation struck him. “ But 

how,” he demanded sadly “ can I leave you now- 

alone? ” 

“ You must, Roderic dear,” she answered quickly, 

** until-” and she paused abruptly. No, no! ” she. 

all but sobbed in another voice, that seemed to pull at 
her heartstrings and at his. “ No, I couldn’t bear it. I 
am going with you, Roderic dearest.” 

‘‘ You! ” he exclaimed aghast, yet with a strange thrill 

of joyous exultation in his heart. “But how?-Is 

it-do you think-” 

“ I am going, Roderic dear; I must. I can’t leave 

you. What — does anything matter ?-What do I 

matter?” She added with a seemingly irrelevant, aloof, 
almost rapt speculation, her eyes turned upon the network 
of darkness straight before her. “ You see, they’ll find 
you there — sure to find you at last — and they must 










FUGITIVES 


165 


find me there, too! In a sudden flash the meaning of 
her words blazed into his brain. 

“ God! Allene, darling, you are brave ! ” he breathed 
in exultant admiration. She was a thousand times braver 
than he could ever dream of being, was the thought that 
passed like a spark of light through his brain. Did he 
deserve all that — even though he truly loved her ? 

“ Oh, Roderic,” she queried suddenly with a sort of 
fiery abstraction. “ Do you really love me? ” 

Now, that was a perplexing thing. Why should she ask 

him that just then ? Did he really love her, when- 

“ Not as you deserve,” he finally answered in a rush 
of illuminating candor. You are so wonderful, darling, 

and I-But I merely worship the ground you walk 

on, the least thing about you — and as for death, if I 

could die a thousand times for you-” 

“ Hush! ” she breathed and laid her cold fingers on 
his lips. And then she uttered a deep sigh, which deeply 
echoed in his own tense heart. 

“ Then let us start, dearest,” she commanded and rose 
lightly from her place on the stone. 

“ Like this ?-” he began glancing at her attire, her 

hair. 

Like what, then ? ” She gave a sad little laugh. “ I 

couldn’t go back and change-don’t you see ? And 

we must hurry, dear. We’ve no time to lose.” She 
with her fragility seemed to tower with strength. ‘‘ Have 
you any matches ? ” she demanded suddenly. 

“ Yes,” he felt in his pocket, “ a few.” 

“ That’s good,” she whispered. And on a sudden she 
threw an arm about his neck, pressed her lips against his 
and held him close for an intense moment of throbbing 
silence. It was a moment like no other that Roderic 
had ever experienced. There was a fulness about it, 
charged with a burden of unspoken words which both. 







166 


A NEW WORLD 


he believed, desired to utter and could not, — an immense 
finality, a momentous beginning. She turned away sud¬ 
denly with a slight quK^er of her head. 

“Come,” she said. 

Then taking his hana in hers, they moved away cau¬ 
tiously into the dark interlacing tangle of vegetation. 

The terrible splendor of life! He was silently ex¬ 
claiming to himself over and over, as he groped slightly 
behind her. But what was passing in Allene’s mind at 
that moment? Her hand was in his, her spirit was act¬ 
ing, guiding, absorbed only in his interest. They were 
as nearly one in heart and mind as it is given human 
beings to be. Nevertheless, he was oppressed by the 
barriers of separate personalities that parted him from 
her. Even in this hour of love and adoration the most 
intense, her spirit was hers, and his apart. No absolute 
fusion was possible against the loneliness that held them 
severed, though together. For the moment, however, 
he was content to be a satellite to her own free and 
governing spirit. She led the way and he followed with 
confident steps. 

They walked in silence at first or with only brief, 
monosyllabic words of caution, guidance and assent. 
How marvellously at home Allene the exquisite seemed 
to be in this wild jungle of creepers, underbrush and 
tree trunks standing or fallen! To Roderic, from the 
harder northern clime of small-leaved vegetation and 
whiplike vines, the broad expanse of some creeper leaf 
of the fig family that flapped against his face like a ban¬ 
ner, the ropelike lianas, the giant climbers like flexible 
tree trunks in grotesque twists and coils, bent upon 
choking and destroying the more rigid boles, still brought 
a sense of uncanny struggle, as though powerful living 
organisms were silently clashing and battling. But out- 


FUGITIVES 16T 

wardly at least Allene walked on among them without 
trepidation. 

“ We mustn’t lose our way,” she whispered at one 
time, as she paused, glancing round and upward for 
direction. 

I am just finding mine,” he answered mechanically,, 
like one startled out of a dream. And then he realized 
that it was not he that spoke, but something deeper than 
his surface mind, — a voice from the very depths of his 
being. His mind was suspended, functionless, as though 
the power from it had been turned off by a switch. 

When they came to the softer ground lower down,, 
which seemed like a bed of humus dank with the smell 
and accumulation of ages of dead vegetation, she 
paused. 

I am glad there are no snakes on the island,” she 
murmured. It was the only sign of trepidation she had 
shown thus far. 

“ I’ll carry you, darling,” he declared, seized her in 
his arms and lifted her as one lifts a child. He could 
see her smiling tenderly under the starlight as she nestled 
in his arms, gazing up to him with eyes full of starshine. 

“ I ought to be carrying you, dear,” she whispered; 
“ everybody has been so hateful to you.” Her profound 
human sympathy, despite her youth and the environing 
circumstances, brought him a deep humility. 

“ Sweetheart! ” was all he could murmur. ‘‘ You are 
carrying me,” and he kissed the soft lips under his. But 
he only walked a few steps wfith his sweet burden, when 
she asked to be let down. 

‘‘ Better let me walk, Roderic. Then we can both step 
more lightly. This way you sink so much deeper — 
with my weight.” He did not answer and trod on. Her 
weight! But she insisted and he was obliged to set her 
down again. 


168 


A NEW WORLD 


The soggy moss swished and gurgled round their feet, 
which sank often ankle-deep. More than once Allene 
lost a slipper and Roderic his rope-soled sandals. Both 
became masses of slimy ooze. But Allene insisted that 
they both must wear their footgear, regardless of dis¬ 
comfort, from an instinctive feminine fear of hidden 
dangers beneath. A thin white mist hung over this val¬ 
ley that lent a supernatural ghostlike quality to the scene. 
Allene was in a hurry to pass through it, and she pressed 
on with a steady energy that constantly surprised him. 
They came to the higher ground at length and on the edge 
of the mammea grove Allene sat down on a fallen tree 
and sighed. 

“ Now we can rest a minute,” she said. Roderic 
stepped forward into the grove, plucked two or three of 
the melonlike mammea apples, cut them in half and slicing 
out the interior with his knife, fed Allene with the juicy, 
soft red meat of a flavor like no other, and she was re¬ 
freshed and grateful. 

“ These little things, darling, are all I can do for you,” 
he murmured ruefully. He was young enough to feel 
distressed and depressed by the undoubted leadership of 
a mere girl, even though that girl were Allene, in the 
really momentous enterprise. 

You are doing all — everything, dear,” she answered 
sweetly. “ It’s you — your strength, Roderic. A year 
ago — a month ago even — I could no more have done 
this than fly.” He was grateful but not deceived. 

^‘Courage — strength must be in you, to come out,” 
he told her. ‘‘ And you are just aflame with them.” 

She laughed softly with a liquid note as of tears, and 
leaped from her seat. 

“ It isn’t strength or courage, dear; it’s just — love.” 

'' Come,” she called almost gayly, taking his hand, “ the 
dawn will come before we know it.” 


FUGITIVES 


169 


“What do we care?’’ he asked, lightly pressing her 
hand. “Aren’t we here?” If only, he thought, this 
ramble with Allene, however charged with somber 
gravity, could continue endlessly! 

“ What do we care! ” she expostulated gently. “ Oh, 
Roderic dear, don’t you see? Bruce has probably al¬ 
ready found that you’re not on the schooner. They’ll 
sweep the island. They won’t find out about me until 
later. We must hurry.” 

A shock of realization struck him. He had almost for¬ 
gotten in the company of this marvelous new Allene re¬ 
vealed to him, whom and what he was fleeing! Once again 
the sense of deep hostility on the part of old Galbraith, 
the feeling of being the victim of a man hunt, peculiarly 
odious to him, when he had committed no crime, done 
nothing but labor from the time of his landing here, 
came over Roderic like a leaden cloud, heralding a storm. 

“ Lord! ” he muttered half to himself, “ I still can’t 
see why your father should hate me so. After all. I’ve 
done nothing to him.” 

“ Some day you’ll understand better,” she answered. 
“ It isn’t just you, Roderic dear. It’s anybody. But it’s 
all my fault, don’t you see? It’s because he loves me so 
much, poor dad! ” Her voice was quivering. “ He 
thinks he can hold me as he holds this island, the place 
he has made and built up with his hands. If only he 

could have-” and the pathos of the ancient conflict 

between parental will and the child’s desire shook her. 
“ But I can’t change my heart, Roderic dear. I know 
how much I’m hurting him and I can’t help it! That’s 
what makes it so horrid. The only other thing I could 
do would be to die. I tried so hard to give you up, dear 

-oh, yes, I have tried-but I couldn’t, couldn’t, 

simply couldn’t I ” 

Roderic gripped her shoulders with a swift movement. 





170 


A NEW WORLD 


and felt a spasmodic tug at his heart, wrung by contri¬ 
tion, gratitude, love, emotion, more poignant that he had 
yet experienced. 

‘‘And you won’t regret it, darling!” he whispered 
huskily, himself shaken. “ I want to live only for you, to 
make you the happiest girl on earth.” 

The happiest girl on earth! How grotesque those 
words sounded now! As they reverberated in his heart, 
the darkness and uncertainty of their background sud¬ 
denly galled and stung him. They were fugitives, on a 
dot of land controlled by enemies! In the aching fret 
of his rebellion against circumstances, a thought that con¬ 
tinually rankled in his mind now insistently pressed for 
utterance. 

“ I can understand your father better,” he said, “after 
what you’ve told me about him. But to pick Bruce for 
you, of all men — that’s what I can’t understand — 
Bruce! ” 

“ That’s where father went wrong,” she answered him 
simply, readily. “ Old people are like that sometimes, 
don’t you think so, dear ? And he is so obstinate — and 
I am so obstinate — poor dad! ” 

The clarity of her vision in those conditions was a 
new revelation to him, that impressed and captivated him 
afresh. 

They walked on through the cleaner growth of mam- 
mea trees, each with its dark spray of leaves at the top, 
and the fruit clustering beneath the leaves. Roderic put 
a steadying arm about her in the hope that that might 
ease in part the burden of her toiling uphill. Willingly 
and gladly at that moment would he have carried her on 
his shoulders or inside his heart, if that had been pos¬ 
sible. The ground was constantly rising. Again and 
again he begged her to pause and rest, but she only shook 
'her head and pressed on. 


FUGITIVES 


171 


Before long they were leaving the mammea grove and 
emerging upon high ground, rugged and more broken, 
but still green, with here and there a palm stem tapering 
into the night. The intermittent sound of the surf was 
louder here and the darkness below was the sea. 

On a sudden Allene paused and laid a cautioning hand 
upon his arm. 

“ Listen! she whispered. 

‘‘ What is it ? ” 

‘‘Don’t you hear — voices — far off?” He listened 
intently with straining eardrums that were not yet prac¬ 
ticed enough to discount the surf. He could hear nothing 
else at first. Finally, very faintly, as from a great dis¬ 
tance, he thought he could discover something like the 
most tenuous reflections or echoes of calls, shouts, but 
be told himself he was not sure. 

“Perhaps it’s the breeze,” he murmured. She shook 
her head. 

“ Bruce has found out you’re not aboard. Let’s hurry, 
dear.” And in her voice was anguish which he appre¬ 
hended clearly. Upon an island where this auditory ex¬ 
perience was possible, to hear voices from the lagoon at 
the pier, concealment for long was hardly probable. In¬ 
deed, it was absurd. It was a despairing situation. 

“Hurry on, dear,” urged Allene. “ Let’s hurry.” 

The forces now playing about them seemed like great 
crashes of lightning, terrible and menacing, that might 
spare as they might destroy. In any case, they were 
wildly, terrifyingly illuminating. Allene had intuitively 
felt this from the moment she had decided to come to 
him. But even Roderic was now for the first time per¬ 
meated by the sense of possible tragedy, — by the feel¬ 
ing that they were embarked not so much upon an 
adventure as on the opening act of a grimly fateful life 
drama. 


172 


A NEW WORLD 


They were upon the cliffs now. The boom of the 
surf was loud, and the darkness assumed that more in¬ 
tense dead quality that to those who know heralds the 
dawn. 

To Roderic, however, it brought an immense pity for 
the girl beside him, a burst of sudden comprehension of 
what he was doing. She was at that moment dearer to 
him than all else on earth, including himself. Her frail 
courageous beauty seemed to cry out to him for protec¬ 
tion. He suddenly felt himself miserably unworthy of 
all this sacrifice. She was cutting herself off from all 
that was her own, her past, everything, for him. What 
was he to her? He was a stranger from nowhere, lead¬ 
ing her to wretchedness, to pain, to he knew not what. 
A wave of depression swept over him. 

“ Listen, dear,” he spoke hurriedly. “ How can I 
lead you into all this trouble — on my account ? I am 
not worthy of it. Come on. I’ll take you back to your 

father-I’ll give myself up to them and — take the 

consequences.” 

She stood still for a moment and looked at him aghast. 

“ Is that what you want? ” she asked in a low murmur. 

“Is that what I want! My darling, if I could only 
make you understand! You are everything to me — a 

million times more than mv own miserable life-If 

only I could make you understand. That’s why the 
thought of your suffering is — is horrible. To cut you 

off this way — is horrible- I’ve just realized- 

how I wish you’d understand!-It’s not my wants 

I was thinking of, but you-you, sweetheart!” 

Her answer was either a laugh or a sob, he did not 
know which. It was like the sound a crying child makes 
whose wish had been gratified, and its last sob may be 
either involuntary or an expression of joy. 

“ Come, dear, and let’s hurry,” was all she said, as she 








FUGITIVES 


173 


slipped her arm through his and again urged him onward. 
He stumbled on beside her with an immensity of relief 
that all but intoxicated him. Her step suddenly grew 
more cautious. The surf was crying more loudly. An 
inshore breeze fanned their faces. 

“ The caves must be somewhere here,” she whispered. 
‘‘ Be careful, dear, how you step. Now get your matches 
out. And don’t let us lose any of them. We need them 
all.” With careful guidance she led the way, still cling¬ 
ing to his arm, along the top of the cliffs, and he found 
himself descending a shallow gully. When they were at 
the bottom she bade him light one of the matches and 
stood so as to screen the light from the land. The match 
blew out almost instantly, but it had given her enough 
illumination evidently, for she led the way down the gul- 
ley overgrown with ferns toward the edge. Once at the 
edge she stood for a moment and turned her face toward 
the east. He followed her gaze with a febrile anxiety. 

“ The dawn,” she murmured. 

Yes, down in the direction of the house and the pier, 
a faint grayness seemed to be opening up the darkness 
like the cutting edge of some gigantic knife, cleaving the 
heavens. Under their very eyes the rift kept growing 
wider and the darkness to fade into pallor. The first 
tinge of redness like a shadowy bar touched the far 
horizon. 

Allene stirred as from a reverie and with an inarticu¬ 
late murmur turned her back upon the nascent light 
toward the darker side. The cliffs were broken and they 
walked on for a space on the ledge the breadth of a 
country road, lined with fern and small vegetation, with 
here and there a palm overhanging from above. 

“ Here,” she said suddenly, before a mass of the ferns, 
“ let’s look in here. Light a match, dear.” 

The light revealed an opening in the cliff behind the 


174 


A NEW WORLD 


ferns. Both of them bent low and peered inward, Rod- 
eric extending his hand with the lighted match in front 
of him. 

Scattered fragments, something white, were gleaming 
inside the cave, — bones, portions of human skeletons. 

“ Oh! ” Allene uttered one cry and leaped back hor¬ 
ror-struck. Roderic dropped his match and was at her 
side in an instant. She was shaking from head to foot, 
quivering as in an ague. 

‘‘ Allene! ” he muttered wildly, incoherently. ‘‘ Hor¬ 
rible !-Lord!-I didn’t know! ” 

“ Of course you didn’t — dear,” she spoke with chat¬ 
tering teeth. “I — ought to have told you. They used 
to bury their dead here. But — what does it matter!” 
And she laughed hysterically, with the back of her hand 
across her face and her head lowered as if in shame. 

The eastern sky was now flaming. The dawn was 
racing forward like a conflagration. The edge of the 
sun, an incandescent arc, was already showing on the 
horizon. Her body was still quivering slightly against 
his arm. 

“ Shall we go back, dear? ” he asked her, alarm and 
dull resignation mingled in his voice. 

“ No, of course not! ” she gasped, her body stiffening 
under the rigid command of her will. “ Let’s try the 
next one.” 

The opening of the next cave, in a cliff shaped some¬ 
what like a human head, was broad and only little lower 
that their own heads. Automatically Roderic struck a 
match and with a gesture which bade Allene stand with¬ 
out, he bent forward and stepped exploringly inward. 
The cave was clean, with little vegetation at its mouth, 
the white coral rock stained in patches of brown here 
and there, with crumbling fragments of the stone strew¬ 
ing the cracked irregular floor. Two lizards ran out 




FUGITIVES 175 

between his feet and scuttled away down the farther 
edge. 

“ This is all right,” he called out thickly to Allene. 
The match burnt his fingers and expired as she ap¬ 
proached. He lit another. She peered inward over his 
shoulder. 

“ Yes,” she breathed. This is all right,” and they 
crept in. At the back of the cave, a ledge of stone like 
a narrow sloping bench protruded from the wall. 

“ Sit down here, dear, and rest.” He held his flicker¬ 
ing match aloft and pointed toward the ledge. But on 
a sudden she uttered a low, sobbing cry, grasped at the 
roof of the cave wildly and would have fallen if he had 
not dropped his match and caught her with both arms. 

“ What is it, darling,” he cried in alarm. ‘‘ Are you 
fainting ? Speak to me! ” 

“ No, dear,” she sighed with a strained tearful weari¬ 
ness. ” Fm all right. Only tired — oh, so tired! ” 

Swiftly he lifted her in his arms, struck his head 
against the roof as he tried to straighten under his bur¬ 
den, but he was scarcely aware of it. With Allene resting 
in his arms, he sat down heavily upon the ledge. A con¬ 
vulsive shudder shook her like a child after a great 
fright or a harrowing experience. Her head fell pathet¬ 
ically against his shoulder. Her eyes were closed and 
even in that obscurity he could see that her face was 
deathly white. At moments she still quivered with little, 
spasmodic shivers that penetrated him like a knife. At 
last she was still. All the bright eager life seemed to 
have gone out of her. 


CHAPTER XVI 


THE STRUGGLE 

Moveless, Roderic sat gazing now at Allene, breathing 
softly against his breast, in the crepuscular dimness of 
the cave, now outward at the pure morning light that re¬ 
vealed a speckless heaven and the almost cutting blue of 
the untroubled Pacific stretching boundlessly southward. 

Once again he felt himself a cast way against a cosmic 
infinite background. But now it was far less simple. 
He was a castaway, a fugitive, but not alone. She was 
with him, she, — who filled the world by herself and 
was more precious than all worlds. His mind was now 
revolving round and round only one thought: He must 
not lose her! The strangeness of his bizarre situation 
seemed a natural part of the order of events. 

Only a terrible anxiety was in his heart as he kept 
gazing down at the white face beneath his eyes. 
Whelmed in its cloud of silken hair, that pale face seemed 
so little and trusting, so infinitely dear. With capricious 
obstinacy a whimsical speculation he was not inviting 
kept winding through his harassed brain. 

Why and how did she come to give him her love, 
even so far back as on the outward voyage? How do 
they choose and how come to bestow it upon this or 
that one, — upon him? He felt himself contritely un¬ 
worthy, and found no answer to these insistent, buzzing 
questions. He only knew that now his life was hers and 


THE STRUGGLE 


177 


that he was more than ready to spill it in her behalf. An 
obscure fear kept hovering in the background of his 
thoughts that those men might appear at any moment, 
and, by their ugly passions, reduce what was great and 
beautiful to their own stature and color. Except for the 
voice of the reef across the narrow strip of lagoon, no 
sound came to his ears. And the voice of the reef, with 
its dazzling shimmer of white, seemed oddly cheerful now. 
But the expectation of being at any moment hunted down 
kept his mind riveted to the figures of those' two men 
who loomed darkly in his imagination. 

Again and again he kept gazing down at the miracle 
of Allene’s closed eyelids, at her misty hair which he 
touched lightly with his cheek, at the perfection of her 
slightly parted lips. Finally he could not resist gently 
touching them with his own. Their sweetness and soft¬ 
ness seemed to melt all the bitterness of his thoughts 
regarding Galbraith and Bruce. Over and over again 
he brushed her lips with his. A faint color came stealing 
to her cheeks and her eyelids fluttered open and his heart 
gave a joyous leap. They closed again, however, and 
though he felt contrition at disturbing her, a new ex¬ 
ultation bounded in his veins and once again the throb¬ 
bing of life gave him a sense of mastery, of readiness 
to meet fate if it took the form of a dozen Galbraiths 
or Bruces, — of triumphant youth. A flash of heat over¬ 
spread all his body. The sweet purity in her face was 
awe-inspiring. 

He kissed her lips fervidly and this time he found her 
lustrous eyes gazing into his and a deeper flush upon 
her cheeks. 

“Allene — darling — love!” he whispered in an 
ecstasy. “ To think all that you have been and are to 
me! ” She smiled faintly with those exquisite parted 
lips and with a whimsical troubled sweetness murmured: 


178 


A NEW WORLD 


“A great deal of trouble, Roderic — just having my 
own way.” 

“ That’s the grandest way there is, dearest; the only 
way in the world.” 

“ But we are not at the end of it yet,” she replied more 
soberly, her face clouding over. 

“ No, it’s not the end,” he answered slowly, swept 
anew by the menace of their situation. “ But it’s the 
beginning,” he added firmly. “ It will always be the 
beginning with us as long as we are together.” 

“ Always ? — always ? — ” she repeated dreamily. 
Then suddenly with a moan, she cried, Oh! I wonder 
how soon they’ll come tracking us here! ” 

“Don’t let us think of that,” he urged quickly, tenderly. 
“If only this could last forever — like this!” and he 
pressed her to him more warmly. 

They were lost for a moment in each other’s eyes, 
gazing deeply with the thrill of ineffable love. 

On a sudden Roderic’s body quivered to an involuntary 
rigidity. He had looked up. Allene’s eyes swiftly fol¬ 
lowed his. The mouth of the cave was perceptibly 
darkened. The face and form of Bruce McClung was 
filling the middle of the entrance! 

A tense and chilling silence followed for perhaps ten 
seconds, that seemed vastly longer, during which the 
occupants of the cave and the man without regarded each 
other fixedly, almost it seemed without breathing. Then 
Bruce McClung bared his teeth in a grin that was like 
a snarl, intending to convey his irony, contempt and 
hatred. 

Allene suddenly made as if to rise from her position 
and sat down, quivering, against Roderic on the ledge, 
her eyes still fixed upon the staring gaze of Bruce. Rod¬ 
eric leaped to his feet and charged forward. 

“ What do you want? ” he cried. “ Get out of this! ” 


THE STRUGGLE 179 

He felt himself swept by a wave of passionate hatred for 
that man. He felt suddenly capable of anything now 
excepting thought. 

“ ril be taking this young woman back — to her 
father/' was Bruce’s maddeningly calm reply. “ We’ll 
deal with vou later.” 

Roderic scarcely remembered what happened during 
the next few seconds. He was a raging creature of the 
wild, possessed by a frenzy of hate for Bruce, of pro¬ 
tection for Allene, of a sweeping ferocity he did not sus¬ 
pect existed in him. A red dimness filmed his eyes. He 
plunged forward toward Bruce and encountered nothing. 
He dashed out of the cave, saw a figure in white drill 
retreating on the rim at the edge of the cliffs. At the 
turn where the gully between the two prominences leads 
back to the papaya grove, he caught him by the collar 
and grappled with him. 

They swayed together for an instant, the snarling grin 
on Bruce’s face now changed to a grim deadly look of 
hatred. On a sudden Roderic saw Bruce’s hand slip¬ 
ping into his coat pocket and his own instantly followed 
it. He knew what the metallic object was that he en¬ 
countered beneath the other man’s fist. He seized it 
by the middle in the fraction of a second before the 
other man had quite gripped it and with a backward 
sweep of his hand hurled it far out over the cliff behind 
him. Then a shower of blows from his fists with a 
rapidity that he could not possibly have planned, seemed 
to nullify the other’s guard, to fall with a machinelike 
force upon his face, head, shoulders, chest, — until Bruce 
stumbled backward, fell, and lay huddled at his feet. 

The sudden cessation of the driving of his fists was 
the first pause that gave him a consciousness of what he 
was doing. He glared down at the crumpled form of 
Bruce on the ground, and in the same moment, it seemed. 


180 


A NEW WORLD 


he saw Allene running toward him from behind, wring¬ 
ing her hands; and before him, descending from above 
into the gully, he perceived the brick-red face of old 
Galbraith with Rupee and Orui scrambling in the rear. 

He ran back to Allene, threw an arm about her shoul¬ 
ders and stood panting and quivering at her side. By 
the time he looked again at the spot that was the scene 
of his conflict, he saw Bruce scrambling to his feet with 
the help of Orui, and Galbraith towering over him with 
a fury that seemed to verge upon an apoplectic stroke, 
cursing and calling the wretched Bruce a “ white-livered 
slack-twisted loon.” 

A muttering protest, which he could not catch, came 
from Bruce, who seemed unsteady upon his feet. He 
was wiping blood from his lips with a handkerchief. 

“ Wheesht! ” cried the old man. Don’t talk to me! 
A fine mess you’ve made of it! You should have come 
back to me!” 

In justice to Bruce, Roderic thought then, and he has 
thought ever since that there was little else he could 
have done, — he being Bruce. 

But rigidly Galbraith came stalking toward them along 
the gully, his eyes fixed in a devastatingly fiery glare, not 
upon Roderic, but upon the face of his daughter. 

You dare to look me in the face! ” he snapped with 
a bitterness of wrath that made her lower her eyes. He 
stood glaring for a time without speaking, but burning 
with rage to the boiling pitch. 

Answer me! ” he rasped harshly. ‘‘ When did you 
leave the house? ” 

‘‘ It was a quarter to twelve, father,” she spoke in a 
low tone, but with no suggestion of shame, which 
thrilled Roderic and brought him a sudden glad heart¬ 
ening. 

‘‘ Quarter past twelve! ” he repeated, in a raging con- 


THE STRUGGLE 


isr 


sternation. “You have been all the night!’’ And his 
hand flew up to his throat. 

“ Oh, father! ” she cried in alarm, and started forward. 

“ Stand away there! ” he warned her hoarsely. “ You 

— you!- D’ you know what ye’ve done?” She 

was silent, her eyes gazing piteously at his struggle with 
his own rage. 

“ Answer me! ” he cried again. “D’ you know what 
you’ve done ? ” 

“ Yes, father,” she answered low, and then the tears 
literally came jetting from her eyes down her cheeks 
and she lifted up her voice. “ I love him, father,” she 
spoke out simply, with quivering lips. “ And he loves 
me! ” A great pride shot glowing through Roderic’s 
pulses at this, and he drew more closely to Allene. 

“ Love! love! love!-” exclaimed the old man, be¬ 

side himself in a fury of exasperation. “God — girl! 
Are you your mother over again? I little thought I’d 
live to see the day! ” 

A flush of red leaped into her face and suffused it. 

“Yes!” she cried, trembling. “My mother over 
again! And I’m glad and — proud of it! I love 

him-” She seized Roderic’s hand and gripped it. 

“ He’s the only husband I shall ever have! I would die 
sooner — throw myself from that cliff before I’d marry 

— anybody else! ” And with tears still streaming, and 
trembling from head to foot, she stood against Roderic at 
a loss for a moment, then threw herself sobbing and 
quivering against his breast. 

“ Darling,” Roderic in a choked voice told her, as he 
held her to him; “my Allene — my wife. Let them try 
to part us if they can!” 

Glowering, baffled, speechless, old Galbraith stood for 
a moment, lifted his hands halfway and dropped them, 
glanced mechanically over his shoulder at Bruce and the 





182 


A NEW WORLD 


natives close behind him, turned and started to walk 
toward them, only to spin round again and pause. He 
seemed to stiffen and crackle to his full height. Then 
for the first time he addressed Roderic. 

Bring her back to the house! ” And he turned and 
walked rigidly away, his back with a slight stoop now 
as he addressed himself to the sloping side of the gully. 
Roderic experienced a faint thrill of admiration for the 
old man, who wasted no further words in abuse, revile- 
ment or superfluous precautions. In Galbraith’s view 
seemingly all that could happen had already happened. 

For some minutes Allene still stood sobbing against 
Roderic’s breast, speechless the while he endeavored to 
soothe her with incoherent words of endearment. 

“ I knew how much it would hurt him,” she finally 
uttered brokenly. “ And — oh! — I am sorry! But — 

but-” and she could not speak further. Slowly, 

silently, Roderic giving her what support he could, they 
set out in the wake of the others toward the house. 

Only the lame Hupee, aflame with curiosity, looked 
back at them, though Orui from time to time cast a 
furtive friendly glance toward them over his shoulder. 

“ Are you strong enough, dear ? Can you walk all 
the way back?” Roderic asked her tenderly. It would 
have been no surprise to him had she shown signs of 
failing, after a sleepless night of fatigue and harrowing 
experience. But her will power was as ever dominant. 

Oh, yes,” she answered almost impatiently. “ But 
what will they do, dear — what will they do ? ” 

That was something concerning which he himself was 
filled with a febrile thirst for knowledge. 

“ What can they do ? ” He answered mechanically, 
without thinking. “If they try to put me on that 
schooner, it will be the worse for them. They’ll never 



THE STRUGGIE 


183 


take me away from here alive. And your father heard 
what you said. What can they do?” 

A moment’s reflection afterward showed him that 
these hastily spoken words of reassurance expressed his 
innermost thought. It flashed through his mind that 
he should not have cast away Bruce’s weapon. Yet, 
the next instant he was glad he had. 

‘‘ Bare hands! ” he muttered to himself aloud, “ Bare 
hands I ” 

What did you say, dear ? ” Allene queried. 

Nothing, dear. I was talking to myself.” 

They were walking back along exactly the same way 
they had come and he felt a new admiration for Allene 
and the sureness with which she had piloted them to the 
caves, during the night. It struck him, as he looked 
ahead at the others entering the papaya grove, that the 
procession was oddly like a funeral. The two white 
men in advance, the one erect, the other with his wretched 
head hanging, and the two brown natives like mutes be¬ 
hind them. The contemplation of the hangdog appear¬ 
ance of Bruce brought him a thrill of savage pleasure. 
‘‘ I had saved that beating up for him,” he thought 
boyishly,, “ and I surely delivered it.” But the soberer 
cast of thought supervened and once again his mind 
went racing toward the future. More than once he 
urged Allene to pause and rest, but always she shook 
her head. Only when they reached the little pool by 
the stone she stopped suddenly, stretched out her hands 
and murmured, 

“ Oh, Roderic, I know how father feels. If only I 

hadn’t hurt him so I But — but-” And Roderic 

knew that despite her piteously sincere contrition, her 
heart was irresistibly singing, as was his own. In the 
depths of her eyes was a solemn joy, the joy of youth 
triumphant. 



184 


A NEW WORLD 


“ If I loved you before,” he answered her irrelevantly, 
“I love you a million times more now. You are — 
superb! Nothing can ever drive me from you! ” 

The others were already past the bougainvillea and 
could not see them embrace. Not once had old Galbraith 
turned his head during that entire march. 

“ The old sport! ” thought Roderic, not without a 
touch of admiration for the stiff, rigid, old figure in 
white. 

On a sudden, when the white men in advance came 
to the edge of the canebrake, they paused and Galbraith 
for the first time turned and summoned the following 
natives to him. They were in brief colloquy for perhaps 
a minute. To his daughter and Roderic he gave not 
even a glance. 

What are they plotting now ? ” Roderic wondered 
out of curiosity rather than any sense of alarm. No 
alarm, seemingly, could penetrate him now. He was in¬ 
sensible to any trace of fatigue; he walked as in an 
armor of reckless, defiant confidence. 

“ They are only telling the natives to keep silent,” Al- 
lene murmured quickly, “as though they could!” 

She was probably right, but not a single native face 
was visible anywhere as they approached the house. 
Below on the lagoon the little schooner was riding to 
anchor a short distance from the pier in the channel, 
her nose pointing outward. Galbraith and Bruce had 
disappeared within the house and the natives were sud- 
denlv blotted out. 

Allene and Roderic walked up the veranda steps and 
stood for a moment hesitant before the door. The azure 
heavens and the dazzling sunlight, the immense stillness 
all about seemed to surprise their beating hearts as 
though bent on shaming their tumultuous agitation. 
With a sudden movement Roderic pushed open the door 


THE STRUGGLE 


185 


and they stood with an odd sensation of two strayed 
children come back. The broad, low-ceiled room with 
its dim coloring surrounded them as though bent on 
intimacy. Allene, with a dewy-eyed puzzlement whis¬ 
pered. 

“ It is all just the same, and yet — why is everything 
so strange ? ” 

A clock ticking sounded preternaturally loud, and 
then all at once it occurred to them that they were alone 
in the room. Automatically they listened. A blur of 
voices came to them from Galbraith’s apartment at the 
farther angle on the right. They could distinguish no 
words save a general hum at first. Then suddenly 
Bruce’s voice rose loud with a note of startled shrill in¬ 
credulity : 

“ You’re mad, Uncle Allen! You’re mad — you can’t 
mean it! ” 

The answer was a stream of picturesquely vigorous 
curses that made Allene turn away with a flush for an 
instant, and yet she listened no less eagerly than did 
Roderic. Both their hearts were beating violently. 

But when I tell you,” Bruce, now heedless of dis¬ 
cretion, shrilled, “ when I tell you that I am willing to 
marry her even now — in spite of all that’s happened 

— you can speak of that — that blackguard!-” 

‘‘ Damnation upon you and your willingness! ” cried 
the other with fury. “ I’ll not have your condescension, 
I tell ye I ” 

“ And besides,” he added with renewed vigor, “ you 
are not the man I thought you, Bruce. You’ve bungled! 

— you’ve proven yourself a fool! ” 

“ And is all my work to go for nothing? ” cried Bruce 
with bitterness. “ I’ve changed my life at your bidding 

-I’ve slaved for you! — and now you’ll kick me out 

like a dog when you’ve no further use for me! ” 





186 


A NEW WORLD 


‘‘Rubbish!” rapped the old man. “ Fve told you 
"what ril do for you. You can plant the copra in a 
hundred other places in the Pacific! Now an end to this! 
There’s no help for it, I tell you! D’ye think I’ve planned 

this ?-And there’s but one way.-And that’s my 

way! ” 

The door of his room abruptly opened. He came 
stalking rigidly out and by one of those swift grotesque 
inversion of life he appeared suddenly like some Puri¬ 
tan judge bent upon executing in cold justice what fate 
and passion had already accomplished in his despite. Not 
only did he ignore that he was beaten, but he would 
sternly hurl his victims into the very briar-patch of their 
desires, — which he icily seemed to ignore. 

Bruce after a space came slinking behind him with 
a whipped hanging look. 

Both of them stared in silence for a moment at the 
lovers and then the eyes of Bruce turned toward the 
window. The shadow of a grim, faintly ironical smile 
curled the old man’s lips. He made as if to speak, but 
paused abruptly, as though disdaining to ask the natural 
query, — how long had they been there. He glanced 
sharply about the room. 

“Where’s Akura?” he jerked out with a crackling 
suddenness that in that stillness seemed to shiver the 
air. 

Allene started nervously. “ I-I’ll go find her,” 

she faltered and hastened to the rear of the house. 

“ Bring Orui too,” harshly commanded the old man, 
“ and be quick about it. He will be in the cook house.” 

“ Yes, father,” she murmured hurriedly and disap¬ 
peared through the pantry door. Roderic was determined 
to betray nothing of the awkwardness he felt at the sud¬ 
den disappearance of Allene. Galbraith continued to 
glare at him, and the large low room suddenly seemed too 





THE STRUGGLE 


187 


small and too hot. Like a formless dark lump of earth 
or rock, there loomed before him the single question: 

“ What was the old man driving at — what was he 
going to do? ” 

For one exulting moment Roderic had felt that both 
of the other two men had been beaten. With the disap¬ 
pearance of Allene, however, a flock of ravenlike doubts 
all at once assailed him and seemed to darken the air 
about him. Allene had been the force that fixed him as 
by a natural law to reality and confidence. Without her 
he was again hovering uncertain in empty doubtful 
spaces. The batlike query came wildly dashing at his 
perplexed brain: Was Galbraith about to pack off both 
of them, Bruce and himself, and thus untie a tangled 
knot, as it were, with an ax? Cold beads of perspira¬ 
tion broke out upon his forehead. 

“ I’ll not go,” he told himself, as though hammering 
at his already shapen will with iron; “ I’ll not go! He 
can try it if he likes,” — and with grim firmness he took 
two or three steps to the nearest window and stood 
gazing outward, his jaws set, seeing nothing. It was 
for either a moment or an eternity that he remained thus 
standing; he could not tell how long. His mind was a 
tumult of soundless voices, of dark, half-formed ugly 
fancies, of a rush and roaring as of distant waters. On 
a sudden through the silent and pulsating turmoil, from 
a remote distance, broke a harsh voice calling his name. 

Whitford-Whitford! ” 

He turned and saw Galbraith jerkily motioning him to 
the long table at the upper end of the room. He was 
quiveringly awake in a flash now and firmly stepped for¬ 
ward. He saw Allene as he faced the room and with a 
bound his heart grew strangely light. He saw also Orui 
and Akura but they were merely faces and shapes swim¬ 
ming in the background of Allene. Galbraith stood be- 



188 


A NEW WORLD 


hind the table and Bruce with his two hands leaning on 
the end of it was pallidly intent upon its dark clear sur¬ 
face as though reading something. But there was noth¬ 
ing at all before his eyes. 

“ Allene! — Come here! ” snapped Galbraith and with 
a gesture he summoned the two natives. Bravely, with a 
gentle hesitation at first, yet with a conquering intrepidity, 
Allene drew forward and stood near Roderic, intently, 
anxiously watching the face of her father. If there was 
emotion in that visage, the old man hid it successfully. 
Except for its redness it gave a strange impression of 
hard bluntness like the hammer side of an ax. 

“ Now, Bruce,” sharply cried Galbraith, and after a 
momentary pause he added, with a biting tyrannical 
severity, “Marry them! — Marry them, I say!” 

Those words seemed to have upon Roderic the effect of 
a crash of thunder. The blood was pumping in his heart 
and he actually saw flashes of light before his eyes. And 
suddenly he felt Allene leaning heavily against him; but 
an instant later she was standing erect — beside him — 
at the end of the table opposite Bruce. 

The savage look of helpless bitterness on the face of 
Bruce, the solemnly curious glances of the natives, the 
momentary hesitation, — then the murmur of gabbled 
words all formed a throbbing farrago of agitation, a 
jumble of excited confusion that have ever remained ob¬ 
scure and chaotic in Rodericks memory. He only knew 
that a deadly seriousness charged the air, that the im¬ 
possible had become the possible, that Orui’s assurance 
and belief in miracles were now his assurance and be¬ 
lief. An intense desire to cry out something exultant, 
triumphant, possessed him, when the words, in the mut¬ 
tering, chunnering voice of Bruce, “ — Man and wife! ” 
suddenly arrested everything, like an enchantment. 
There was an instant of dead silence. The masklike face 


THE STRUGGLE 


189 


of Bruce seemed to have disembodied before his eyes. 
Then swiftly he was aware of Allene’s warm arms about 
him, and she was kissing him before all those people! 

And just as his own arms clasped her fiercely, she broke 
away from him with a loud sob and threw herself upon 
her father in a tempest of weeping, as though shaken by 
unendurable grief. For a few moments she hung thus, 
clinging and quivering with sobs, while the old man glared 
stonily before him and then, as though unable to exercise 
control any longer, his gaze somberly drooped over 
Allene’s head pressed against his breast. And he stood 
so for a space, his teeth set in his lower lip. 

“Father — oh, father dear!” Allene’s choked voice 
at last made itself heard articulately. “ Forgive me — 
forgive me! You will forgive me, won’t you?” He 
made no answer, but glanced away over her head. 

“ Forgive me, father — oh, say you forgive me! ” she 
cried again in a frenzy of muffied speech against his 
breast. 

“ Ah, child,” he answered finally in a voice hoarse, 
dulled and strangely quiet for him, “ ye have a strong 
will, but why weren’t you the lad Allan that I wanted 
to be born? It would have been the better for us both.” 

And that was all. Abruptly he then loosed his arms 
from his daughter and pushed her gently away. And 
lifting up her chin with a shaking hand, he gave one 
intent piercing look into her tear-wet eyes and turned 
sharply away. The word forgive was more than the 
self-willed old man could bring himself to utter. And 
in the native he commanded Akura to make ready and 
pack his things. 

“But — where are you going?” Allene all but 
screamed out wildly, with she knew not what clamorous 
fears at her heart. 


190 


A NEW WORLD 


“ I am going to Papeete with Bruce,’’ he answered 
stiffly, and rigidly he stalked to the door of his room. 

“ With a cry Allene flung herself after him. And 
what passed between them there Roderic never knew. 

The long shadow of a purao tree, central in the garden, 
flung itself with abandon at the feet of Allene and Rod¬ 
eric as they stood on the edge of the veranda watching 
the schooner growing smaller and more dim as it stood 
out into the westering sun on the broad expanse of the 
Pacific. The intense metallic blue was dazzling under 
the shimmer of the oblique rays. Except for the voice 
of the surf and the distant laughter of the natives merry¬ 
making on the beach an immense stillness reigned. Tears 
were glistening in Allene’s eyes. 

Why, when he shuts his eyes, this picture should 
stand out to Roderic more saliently than all else of that 
day, it is impossible to tell. But it was very perfect, very 
profound, graven with peculiar incisive subtleties. The 
stillness, the surf, the laughter, the fecundity and growth 
all about, the citrus grove with gleaming green and gold 
beyond the garden, the faint aroma mingled of tiare and 
frangipani, the declining sunlight, Allene, — it was per¬ 
fection. It was all as if suspended and waiting, — for 
what? 

Was it then that a shadowy nostalgia, nameless, in¬ 
comprehensible, lightly clamped his heart for a fleeting 
instant ? — Or was it later ? The schooner was gliding 
into the distant sunset, toward the remote confusion of 
the world far away. What care could he possibly have 
had for the world in the midst of perfect bliss, triumphant 
well-being and felicity? Half-formed simmering images 
and fancies in his mind barely rose before they died again 
into the tender hushed melancholy of complete happiness. 


THE STRUGGLE 191 

As with one impulse the lovers clasped one another in a 
long embrace. 

They slept that night in the room where Roderic first 
had lain as a broken castaway. For a long time he re¬ 
mained awake, moveless, his mind unable to bridge the 
gap between that far-off, incredible condition and the 
more incredible actual present. It could not possibly be 
real, and yet — there lay Allene at his side, in all her 
innocence and fragrant beauty. What a power resided 
in her slender frame. He was awed! 

Allene — Allene! ” he, whispered soundlessly. Her 
name upon his lips was all the answer to his puzzle. 


PART III 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 

CHAPTER XVII 

POSSESSING THE WORLD 

‘‘ Roderic! — is this real or is it a dream ? ” 

More than once that query fell from Allene’s lips, and 
repeatedly he assured her that it was both. Who can 
describe a honeymoon? 

They wandered about the island. They visited the 
natives in their dwellings and every hut was a house of 
feasting when they entered it. They spent hours that 
distilled away into eternity by the pool, and Allene in¬ 
sisted upon finding the spot where Roderic first had 
landed ‘‘ broken by many waters,” and the memory evoked 
her tears. 

She wore and crowned him with garlands of canna 
lilies, tiare and scarlet hibiscus and paid tribute to Heaven 
for casting him up alive. Then she was arch, enchanting, 
with a playfully assumed arrogance as she pointed out 
his folly in trying to pass the island by when she con¬ 
trolled the storms, when she could by invisible cords and 
cables, like another Prospero and Miranda in one, bind 
and draw him to her side. 

He in turn informed her that she was no better than 
a witch and lucky she had not been bom in colonial New 
England. And he brought her news of her eyes, of her 


194 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


swaying grace, of her sensitive tender mouth, her un¬ 
canny beauty, her power. It was scarcely fair, he told 
her, or decent, for one little mortal to have so much. 
And since she was both fair and decent, ergo she was not 
mortal: Q. E. D. 

She parried solemnly by warning him to fear in that 
case the envy of the gods. For if she possessed all that — 
and she took his word for it — it was none of hers now, 
since she and all she had and was were his. 

The glory and the splendor of life were theirs, and 
they swam in it more lightly than they swam in the waters 
of the lagoon. 

At a burst they suddenly discovered that Roderic was 
imbued with a legendary quality among the natives. 

In the huts, in the taro fields, on the lagoon, his strange 
fortune in landing shipwrecked from the sea alone, in 
coming to his love through the very gates of death, spread 
from Akura to the others and he was now the center of 
a legend. His conquest of Bruce, the bending of Gal¬ 
braith himself before his will, since they could not com¬ 
prehend the effect on the father of the night in the cave, 
— all these things crowded the full content of his legend. 
They looked upon him with affectionate awe. Orui, his 
sworn friend and proud in the friendship, reverently 
asked him to lead the singing of himenes in the chapel 
now that Tapena Bruce was gone. 

It was in this case sheer unadulterated shyness and 
modesty that prompted him to refuse and to appoint 
Orui, as the oldest man on the island, to be the precentor. 
But the curious psychology of the natives took it for 
granted that Tapena Vitti-Fori, as they called him, was 
too important to do precisely what a lesser mortal like 
Bruce had done. The man to whom circumstances bowed 
down as to a prince could easily and as of right shape and 


POSSESSING THE WORLD 195 

command circumstances. He was Thane of Glamis and 
of Cawdor too, long before he was aware of it. 

Felicity, the cup of happiness, that is supposed to drug 
its recipients with its subtle liquor, had ho such effects 
upon Roderic. It sent fires of energy dancing through 
his veins and the work of the island suddenly took a 
great forward spurt. 

The word picnic, that had never figured in the natives' 
vocabulary theretofore, under the somber influence of 
Galbraith and Bruce, suddenly became a brightening, al¬ 
luring catchword by the eager suggestion of Roderic. 
Like children who can give stores of energy to games, 
the natives plunged into the wild hilarious pika-nika of 
weeding the taro patches to a marvelous cleanliness, of 
rebinding the stem of every nut-bearing palm upon the 
island with fala leaves to prevent rats from climbing up 
and destroying the buds and clusters of tender young 
nuts; of cleaning out rain-water tanks, clearing away 
coconut husks, pruning, cultivating citrus trees, — end¬ 
less small tasks at which the natives, ordinarily languid 
and perfunctory, now worked with jocund energy in the 
spirit of the pika-nika. Old Orui walked with a new 
pride upon the island. For was he not the trusted friend 
and lieutenant of Tapena Vitti-Fori? 

A new spirit truly has come upon the island,” Orui 
declared to the natives at the huts when he passed or sat 
down for conversation. “ That young Tapena Vitti-Fori 
has brought the gift of happiness with him. And now 
since he married the beautiful daughter of Tapena Gal¬ 
braith he will be with us always. We shall no longer 
have to go back to our homes in Tahiti, in the Paumotus. 
This is that heaven that Brucee used to tell us about — 
but he didn't know how to bring it about.” 

Life was a dream then and a wild rejoicing to Roderic. 
His energy was exhaustless and the brimming happiness 


196 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


inside him seemed like to burst his sides with its throb¬ 
bing, palpitant volume. He would forget altogether that 
the island and all its works were not his, and go about 
its business like a patriotic general or a football trainer 
bent upon making everything and everybody work and 
appear at the point of perfection. 

He would come home to Allene waiting for him, Allene 
fragrant and beautiful, with eyes like wells filled with 
adoration, and throw himself on the mat at her feet, 
sigh his profound contentment and breathe out: 

“ This is heaven, darling — it is too good to last.” 

‘‘Why do you always say that?” she would protest 
with a tremor in her voice. “Why shouldn’t it last? ” 
Her youth and womanhood had an immense capacity for 
taking happiness for granted, as a normal state of being. 

“ I don’t know,” he would smile back. “ I come from 
New England. If the day is bright there, old people 
shake their heads and guess it will rain to-morrow. If 
they have happiness in the house they pull the shades 
down and lock the doors and hide it away until it gets 
moldy. I think that’s what they call the Puritan spirit.” 

“ Then father would have made a good New Eng¬ 
lander,” would murmur Allene. “ But we are not New 
Englanders or Puritans; neither are we old,” and she 
would crouch down prettily on the floor beside him. 
“ Oh, Roderic dearest, shake off New England as I have 
shaken off Scotland. Happiness is ours now. Let us 
enjoy every instant of it. It is so glorious just to be 
alive — we two together! ” 

And so Akura would sometimes find them like children, 
on the floor, and she would laugh joyously, and like a 
devoted affectionate dog she would caress them with her 
liquid eyes. 

“ I always keep forgetting that this place isn’t mine,” 


POSSESSING THE WORLD 197 

he confided laughingly to Allene on one occasion. 
“ Queer, isn’t it? ” 

“ Not at all, dearest. That is exactly the thing to 
forget. I am so happy the whole world seems mine. 
And it is — because it’s ours,” she added cryptically. 

When old Galbraith came back he appeared with pre¬ 
cisely the same mien with which he had departed, save 
that he gave the impression of having perceptibly aged. 
Even after he had taken a survey of the island and had 
seen the work accomplished, his demeanor — cool, stiff 
and taciturn — remained apparently unchanged, except 
for a strange flicker in his eyes, red-rimmed from the 
sea. His speech was brief with a solemn curtness, as 
though he were readjusting himself to a new inevitable¬ 
ness, and he kept much to his room. His old magisterial 
manner, however, was definitely changed. Unconsciously 
or by design he somehow succeeded in conveying the 
notion that he was a guest in his own house, and a not 
altogether happy guest. 

Allene, without saying much concerning her father to 
Roderic, hung upon the old man’s eyes, watched him, 
showered him with affectionate attentions and carried 
on a running conversation at meals with a febrile anxiety 
to please him. She plunged like a plummet into things 
that might draw him out. She talked of the schooner, 
of Papeete, of the price of copra, of the new governor at 
Tahiti, of a hundred things. She never spoke of Bruce, 
however, or of the work of Roderic in his absence. A 
fierce piteous pride constantly checked her from touching 
upon that, yet she kept hoping her father would speak 
of it. But the old man was persistently stiff-necked, 
adamantine. 

On the evening of the fourth day, however, after 
dinner, when ordinarily he rose to go to his room, he 


198 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


glanced quizzically at Roderic across the table, and an¬ 
nounced abruptly: 

Young man, I brought some clothes for you.” 

Oh, father — you darling! ” cried Allene, leaping 
from her chair to her father’s side and throwing her 
arms about his neck. The sight of her tears against the 
old man’s cheek suddenly stabbed Roderic with a nameless 
angry pain and he felt his own eyelids stinging. The 
floodgates seemed on a sudden to be loosened. Allene 
laughed and cried and called her father a dozen endearing 
names and made him appear one of the world’s great 
philanthropists and benefactors. Finally Roderic felt 
compelled to speak. 

“ That’s very good of you, sir,” he muttered, “but—’ 
how am I going to pay for them? ” 

“ You have paid for them,” retorted the old man with 
a half-embarrassed crispness. “ I have been looking over 
the island.” 

He said no more then but rose and with a cigar walked 
stiffly out upon the veranda. 

The childishness of the old man on a sudden struck 
Roderic as a curious, newly discovered phenomenon. He 
had had no idea they were like that, he told himself, and 
a strange, half-kindly, half-humorous pity surged up in 
him. It suddenly struck him that the world was to the 
young, to him; that those going out of it are precisely 
as pathetic as the children newly come into it. That 
the very old are even more touching than the very young, 
because they are relinquishing what the young have not 
yet even beheld. Allene, still agitated by her emotion, 
wavered somewhat irresolute for an instant, wiping her 
eyes, when Roderic took her hand and followed the old 
man out upon the veranda. Galbraith stood gazing up¬ 
ward at the stars, silent, aloof, a lonely figure against 
the tropic night. The fragrance of the air was mingling 


POSSESSING THE WORLD 


199 


with the aroma of his cigar. The brilliant stars, so near, 
seemed careless of the feelings in human bosoms. In 
his white clothes he gave oddly the effect of a visitant 
from a distant place, some far planet, contemplating his 
return. 

“ Did you happen to notice, sir,” Roderic spoke out 
boldly and his voice sounded unduly loud, “ how we bound 
up the coconut trees against the rats ? ” 

Yes, lad — I did happen to notice that,” came the 
crisp yet faintly derisive answer after a slight pause of 
abstraction. In fact, I happened to notice everything,” 
— with a fine ironic emphasis on the “ happened.” 

Conversation languished promptly thereafter. 

It was a strange period that followed for Roderic no 
less than for Galbraith. And yet the younger man was 
swept by gusts of resentment that even for the space of 
a moment should he ever be on the defensive. 

Did he not work and toil from morning till night upon 
this man’s estate? Did he not obtain results greatly su¬ 
perior to any that Bruce ever had? Why should he 
catch himself seeking the approbation of that harsh old 
man, from whom no approbation came? Was he, 
Roderic, still a convict toiling for board wages, when 
the work of the island seemed virtually to revolve about 
him? Memory brought him the analogy of Jacob’s toil 
for Rachel and he told himself with indignation that 
Jacob’s work was child’s play compared to his. But 
the Rachel in the case, Allene, was able in those first 
months to blot out all resentment and all indignation by 
simply putting her arms about him, by resting her cheek 
against his or her head on his shoulder. 

That was the period when he first found himself 
seriously analyzing the inscrutable power of woman, the 
power of Allene in particular, and he was lost in wonder 


200 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


at the phenomenon. How did it come about and what 
was the essence of this mysterious influence? All his 
past came back to him and grotesquely distorted it seemed, 
for only that portion in which Allene figured loomed 
full and vivid, like a drama. What had gone before now 
appeared strangely foreshortened like a mere prelude. 
He was not philosopher enough at that time to group 
and label conclusions by names and categories, — or even 
to arrive at very lucid conclusions. He knew only that 
fits of resentment passed, that he could not now hate the 
old man who formerly had displayed so much hatred for 
him, that the feeling in his heart when he came from 
Allene was one of a half-humorous indulgence. His 
father-in-law must be indulged as a child is indulged 
when it is ill, or as some imbecile king is indulged in his 
declining years by courtiers who recall the past glories 
of the now waned and decaying spirit. 

Galbraith, in turn, seemed to vacillate between moods 
of a stinging harshness and fits of abstraction, when he 
sat still and listless upon the veranda, gazing out over 
the lagoon, the reef and the ocean beyond; at the stellar 
infinities of the soft, mysterious nocturnal heavens; at 
nothing at all, at vacancy. It seemed inexplicable to 
Roderic then that these silent moods of Galbraith’s should 
trouble Allene more than his eruptions of harshness. It 
was only later that he came to apprehend the greater 
pathos of the listless detachment which Allene was feel¬ 
ing intuitively. 

As they sat of an evening reading by lamplight, Rod¬ 
eric, who was discovering and filling wide lacunae in 
his education by a sudden voracity for poetry, in which 
Galbraith’s shelves were curiousy rich, he would burst 
out suddenly, 

“ Listen to this, Allene! — 


POSSESSING THE WORLD 


201 


‘ For I the ballad will repeat, 

Which men full true shall find, 

Your marriage comes by destiny, 

Your cuckoo sings by kind.’ 

“ It’s absurd, but isn’t it — isn’t it—? ” he could find 
no words to describe his pleasure in the sense and non¬ 
sense of the Elizabethan jingle. “ Or hear this,” he 
would rattle on delightedly, 

“‘Was this fair face the cause,’ quoth she, 

‘Why the Grecians sacked Troy? 

"^ond done, done fond. 

Was this King Priam’s joy ? ’ ” 

Yes, dear — lovely,” Allene would answer abstract¬ 
edly, looking over her shoulder and with a murmured 
word of excuse steal out to her father, alone on the 
veranda, gazing at the constellations. Then the fine print 
of the double-columned Clark and Aldis Wright Shakes¬ 
peare would blur and run together under his eyes and 
he would find that he was no longer reading but intent 
upon the problem of the somberly moody old man who 
was wilfully darkening his Paradise. 

“ What a damnable character! ” he said to himself on 
one such evening. “ And yet all those poetry books on 
the shelves are his. Could a man like that ever have felt 
a passion for poetry?” He came upon a volume of 
Burns, faded and thumbed with use, and to his amaze¬ 
ment he found on the yellowing pages such stanzas 
scored and underlined as these: 

Aft hae I roved by bonnie Boon 
To see the woodbine twine. 

And ilka bird sang o’ its love; 

And sae did I o’ mine. 

Wi’ lightsome heart I pil’d a rose 
Frae afif its thorny tree; 


202 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


And my fause luver staw the rose, 

But left the thorn wi’ me. 

Galbraith, crusty, harsh old adventurer Galbraith, had 
marked those verses! And in the lines to a mouse the 
words that were barred with lead like a dreary prison- 
house read: 

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men 

Gang aft a-gley, 

And lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain. 

For promised joy. 

• ••••• • 

But, Och 1 I backward cast my e’e 

On prospects drear! 

An’ forward, tho’ I canna see, 

I guess an’ fear! 

It was a revelation to Roderic. He sat petrified for a 
time, lost in the wondrous maze of human nature. It 
was incredible. He clapped to the covers of the book, 
thrust it carefully into its place as though it had not 
been moved and joined Galbraith and Allene on the 
veranda. A brooding silence hung over the group, which 
he for one had not the temerity to break. But from him 
he felt exuding like a current an immense and foolish 
sympathy for the old man, all of whose emotions had 
curdled within him; whose life, now spent, was a tragedy. 
No word was spoken, but the night that enveloped them 
all seemed a tender, more intimate thing, symbolic of the 
common maternity that broods over mortal men, scat¬ 
tered everywhere on the face of earth and waters. Rod¬ 
eric now felt sorry for the father of Allene. 

And almost like a reflection of his own smoldering 
thought the voice of Galbraith suddenly crackled through 
the soft gloom: 

** You and I had better take up navigation seriously 


POSSESSING THE WORLD 203 

to-morrow, lad. Both of us must know how to handle 
the schooner, I’m thinking.” 

A new existence began for Roderic from that time. 
He made the discovery that a hated subject like trigo¬ 
nometry, in which he had failed at the college entrance 
examinations, could become thrillingly interesting like a 
novel, if it entered saliently into the needs of one’s life. 
With the earth for a sphere the spherical triangle took 
on a totally different meaning from that in the forgotten 
textbook. 

Very solemnly, as though inducting him into the mys¬ 
tery of mysteries, Galbraith laid down the position of the 
island on the big general chart with a red cross. 

“ It’s 136 degrees, 7 minutes, 10 seconds west,” Gal¬ 
braith enunciated the figures with incisive impressive¬ 
ness, “ and 15 degrees, 8 minutes south.” And he leaned 
back, fixing Roderic with his eyes as though he expected 
him to shudder at the revelation. And, curiously, Roderic 
did thrill slightly, though it meant little to him at the 
moment. We are just on the edge of the big equa¬ 
torial current. They call it the Peruvian current off 
South America.” And so step by step with the sextant 
and table of logarithms, with his own carefully worked- 
out charts and Findlay — the Epitome — sailing direc¬ 
tories— Roderic was inducted into the science of navi¬ 
gation by one who despite his impatience proved an ex¬ 
cellent pedagogue. 

The occasion when Galbraith had abruptly lent him 
textbooks on navigation came back to Roderic suddenly 
during this period of cramming and he was lost in reverie. 
It seemed ages ago now. How did it happen? Had the 
old man been visited by a sudden glimpse of destiny, 
yielded to it, and then like a wrestler who seems thrown 
but has a last trick concealed, writhed upward and 


204 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


swiftly assailed his adversary with his ultimate gasp? 
Was that it? He didn’t know. He couldn’t tell. 

But — yes — marriage came by destiny. And for a 
man the name of destiny is woman. 

He contemplated Allene with a new, more tranquilly 
meditative speculation. 

This world pivoted about her. She was the center of 
it. And this world — was all the world, so far as they 
were concerned. How the aged hated to surrender it to 
their juniors! He felt himself very mature, very solemn, 
very wise. The yellow leaf of age, he felt, was almost 
upon him, so ripe was he in life’s experience. And then 
he had the grace to laugh at himself as a strange quiver 
of emotion penetrated him. The world was well lost 
for the tender beauty and love of Allene. She was — ah, 
she was all! 

Whether Allene had lost or gained in their common 
adventure it did not at that time even enter his head 
to consider. But he did glance with quizzical, searching 
looks at old Galbraith from time to time. Only traces 
of the former haughty mien, it seemed to him, remained 
upon that red, finely wrinkled countenance. There was 
a sort of hard, contracted peace upon it, — the bitter peace 
of resignation. 

They sailed out of the lagoon upon the schooner that 
was now turned schoolship and Allene insisted upon ac¬ 
companying them on most of the brief cruises. She 
stood or sat by, absorbed in the sextant work, in the cal¬ 
culations, absorbed with parted lips, watching the work, 
watching her men, yet constantly alert and by her very 
innocence putting a constraint upon her father, curbing 
his impulsive outbursts of passion, irritation at mistakes, 
at any signs of bungling or departure from perfection. 
Allene had but to stay behind for Galbraith to assume 



POSSESSING THE WORLD 205 

a wholly different tone in the little combination cabin 
and chart house aft. 

“ That’s what you make it — is it? ” he would rasp out 
with a wild, sneering savagery. “ Damn you for an 
idiot! What do they ever teach you in Yankee schools! 
Go over that again — do it over — and keep your brain 
on the job! — It can’t be done with the bones of the 
skull! ” 

Roderic merely laughed, but not outwardly. He under¬ 
stood that it could not be pleasant to be relinquishing a 
kingdom, handing over one’s world to a successor. And, 
oddly, the world seemed more brilliant to him after these 
outbursts of Galbraith, the sea and sky more vivid, ra¬ 
diant, the sun more dazzling. Life was bounding in 
his veins, and every hour was filled with the palpitant 
freshness of dawn. Circumstances, the stream of life 
itself seemed to be buoyantly carrying him on the might 
of its current, even as it was swirling over the feebly 
struggling resistance of Galbraith, — slowly submerging 
him. It was sad, but not as depressing as if it were 
happening to himself. 

The first shock of a chill disturbance that Roderic felt 
that halcyon year was on the night when Allene, clasping 
his neck with a tremor of joyous rapture and a new, a 
solemn glory in her eyes, breathed a certain ancient revel¬ 
ation to him. 

“ What? — you! ” he gasped foolishly, as though that 
were the first incredible thing he had learned of Allene. 
“ My God! ” And his chest felt suddenly empty as under 
an immense exhausting pressure and then as suddenly 
throbbing and chokingly full with a strange uncomfort¬ 
able crowding of mingled emotions. Was he happy? 
No — yes! Was it aversion or joy that shook him? 
And then he gripped Allene tightly in his arms. 

“ Sweetheart! ” he murmured incoherently. “ You, 


206 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


Allene — you — I can hardly — hardly-’’ and he felt 

her hot tears against his face. 

“ Oh, Roderic, you do love me? You do love me, 
Roderic dearest?” she gasped in a muffled whisper. 

You are not — sorry, are you? ” — looking up quickly. 
“ Oh, you will be glad, won’t you? ” 

He does not remember what he said as he held her 
close. That she had only given him life and the world 
and love, and two or three other things besides, — but 
that aside from this hers was a niggard hand — and the 
like. She was, he remembered, laughing tremulously 
against his breast, and she and he and all life seemed in¬ 
extricably fused together in a new and radiant glow. 



CHAPTER XVIII 


THE SMILE OF IRONY 

Life was so brimmingly full that Roderic barely noticed 
the passage of time. He no longer thought of the episode 
of Jacob toiling for Rachel. He no longer thought of 
his daily work as toil at all. Like a child so occupied 
with its toys that it has “ no time for play,” he was so 
busily, absorbedly growing into the varied interests of 
his life that he had no time to think of happiness. From 
fits of depression and gusts of suppressed annoyance at 
old Galbraith, he had somehow emerged firm and solid, 
and by imperceptible degrees a curious change had come 
over their relative positions. 

Instead of Roderic’s saying to Galbraith, Don’t you 
think we’d better do taro and leave the trees till the end 
of the week,” it was Galbraith who from his chair on 
the veranda would inquire with a dry casualness: 

“ What are you going to do to-morrow, lad? ” 

“ Turn all hands into the taro patches, sir,” Roderic 
would answer with a gay certitude. ‘‘ Make a picnic of 
it. Have a big swim in the lagoon at the end of the 
day and a sing in the evening at the fare himene. Have 
a grand time.” 

“ Ah,” would comment Galbraith and nod his head 
slightly. What he thought Roderic didn’t know and it 
didn’t matter. 

It is not that he was now impatient of the old; heaven 
knew he was not like that, — not another Galbraith. 


208 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


Live and let live was his motto. But he felt mildly 
humorous at Galbraith’s expense. 

“ Old putterer,” he thought, as he walked gaily, 
springily in white, with his broad-brimmed Pandanus 
hat, down the avenue of palms to the beach or to the 
sheds, — “old putterer. He thinks he is running the 
show. He doesn’t seem to realize that his day was yes¬ 
terday. See him fussing in the garden with his scraggly 
rosebushes, things he can’t yell at and that don’t care a 
hang for his swearing — and he is just a poor old dub. 
I can draw circles round him even at that job.” 

And then a sort of half-ironical pity, a flush of shame, 
a dimly understood sympathy for the broken man would 
blow through his consciousness like a faint breeze. He 
thought, “ He is getting old, the old boy, shaky on his 
pins. Yet he has fought his fight — not a bad fight in 
its way — now the old war horse is getting turned out 
to grass.” Was everybody’s lot like that, he wondered 
vaguely? No! — There was a lot of joy in life if you 
knew how to take it and were — lucky. Anyhow, even 
if everybody came to it, his, Roderic’s time was still a 
long way, — a very long way off. And he whistled 
blithely as he walked across the white sands to the sheds. 

Allene’s baby and his had been born with an ease 
and safety that had given the lie to all of Allene’s tremors 
and his own secret fears, with no help other than Akura’s. 
Both Allene and little Margaret were doing splendidly 
and the tiny silken thing was incredibly accomplished and 
mature already. 

It could crow 1 

Quite spontaneously and without any other stimulus 
than a ray of light, it lay in its cradle at the age of one 
month, a basket on rockers made by himself, its little fists 
flying in the air like two pink fluttering butterflies, and 
before you knew it, it had crowed! 


THE SMILE OF IRONY 


209 


Allene had run to its side in a burst of half-alarmed 
joy and all she saw was the seraphic inimitable baby 
smile on Margaret’s face, the deliciously busy fists, and 
again she was thrilled by that crow. It was like a mes¬ 
sage from the Infinite. 

Roderic happened to be in the room at the time. He 
never mentioned that he had himself felt a brief pang 
of alarm at that first shout of the small human being 
in its exultation at being alive and he drew swiftly near 
the cradle. 

“ Giving us the high sign,” he interpreted with a 
startled laugh. 

The look on Allene’s face! That cannot be described. 
That is one of those slight shining threads that shimmer 
through the more massive tapestry of one’s life. There 
was something in his throat so that speech was — super¬ 
fluous. And Allene was shedding happy tears and laugh¬ 
ing and smothering Margaret with kisses. 

It flashed through his mind a moment later, as he 
turned away: 

Had Galbraith a memory like that of Allene when she 
was a baby? Could he have things of that sort stored 
in his crusty old bosom?” How could one believe it, 
taking all the sharp acidulous nature of the man into 
account? ‘‘ Rusty plates,” he said to himself laconically 
and left it at that explanation. But his own father sud¬ 
denly came sharply into his thoughts, and for days would 
not leave them. His own father must have had at one 
time the same joy in him that he had in Margaret. And 
he had never written the tranquil taciturn man a line con¬ 
cerning his landing upon the island, or his marriage. 
That was something that smote him stingingly with a 
keen-edged contrition and self-condemnation. That was 
an omission he must repair at once, at the earliest minute. 
The next trip of the schooner — then he would be com- 


210 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


pelled to leave Allene and Margaret; but they would have 
to get used to that. The next trip of the schooner — 
then he would in all probability be going alone! 

The fact stood out like a guidepost, or rather a light¬ 
house. It was a stage achieved in the journey. He was 
— what could he call it ? — full-fledged — a master 
mariner in life. The hot sun, the sparkle of the waters, 
the very trade wind seemed to feed him and to make his 
body and spirit expand. He seemed always now to be 
filled with a kind of quiet joyous tumult. Was it that 
heady champagne quality of life that made him appear 
possessed of more vitality than ever beside Galbraith, 
or was the old man visibly failing? For whichever was 
the explanation, the old boy was beyond a doubt appear¬ 
ing constantly weaker, more frail, more lethargic. He 
could sit for hours now on the veranda, silent, immobile, * 
either gazing abstractedly into the distance or with his 
eyes closed. 

“ Queer! ” reflected Roderic. “ Who could ever have 
pictured the old man like that ? — Must write that letter 
to my father,” he concluded irrelevantly, in response to 
a little tug at his heart. It suddenly occurred to him — 
“How long have I been here?” This was — this was 
March — infernally hot, too. Lucky there were plops 
of rain. Nearly two years! — It seemed like two and 
twenty. And yet how joyously happy he was. “ Is this 
real or is it a dream? ” Allene’s words at the culmina¬ 
tion of their romance often came back to him. 

She was not asking that question now, for she was 
troubled. Allene was troubled because her father seemed 
to have suffered his last and final disappointment when 
her child had proved to be a girl. Often the old man 
would gaze at little Margaret by the hour with an aloof 
speculative scrutiny of her smiles and rapturous gurg- 


/ 


THE SmLE OF IRONY 211 

lings, and then he would turn away suddenly toward a 
distant cloudbank or the line of the surf. 

When Roderic returned from Papeete in May, he 
found to his surprise that old Galbraith had seemingly 
taken on a new lease of vigor and activity. He was down 
on the beach in his blazing white drill, — with a new 
alertness about him, issuing orders in his taut and crack¬ 
ling voice, his eyes flashingly commanding as of old. 

It was a shock to Roderic. 

He had left his father-in-law in a state almost decrepit, 
relying, actually leaning in all things on him. Now the 
old man appeared again in the saddle, crisply greeting him 
with, 

“ Well, lad, I expected ye days earlier. What kept 
you so long?’’ 

“ Long! ” Roderic exclaimed in bewilderment, “ I 
didn’t stay an hour more in Papeete than I had to. I 
think I discovered a new island, too. It’s not on the 
chart. I’ll show you where I marked it.” 

“ Aye, very likely,” muttered the old man indifferently. 
“ Every inexperienced navigator discovers new islands 
hereabout — when he makes a mess of his calculations. 
You’ve hit upon one of the Paumotus, no doubt.” 

Roderic’s face fell and also his heart. “ I’ll show you 
the chart, sir.” Galbraith uttered a brief mirthless laugh. 

“ Time enough for that,” he muttered. There’s 
Allene up there waiting. Your island will keep. It has 
kept some time. I’m certain.” 

All the triumph of the performance, of making the 
voyage by himself seemed to turn to ashes in Roderic’s 
mouth. The eyes of the Paumotans glittered toward him 
for the sign that they might leave the schooner. He gave 
the word with an angry sharpness and without looking 
back hurried toward Allene. 


/ 


212 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


Once he held Allene and little Margaret in his embrace, 
and heard Allene’s glad tremulous laughter and looked 
into her eyes, all disappointment and dudgeon fell away 
from him and again he knew the meaning of joy. What 
did old Galbraith matter? 

With Allene the world and its tumult and the cables 
and threads that bound the distant parts together faded 
to an ethereal remoteness, like the vague rumor in the 
hollows of a sea shell. With her was peace and divine 
contentment. Pictures of the far-away world without 
appeared dimly, only to dissolve into the happiness that 
dwelt in Allene’s eyes, in little Margaret’s babblings. The 
gustiness and savage quality of the earlier days had given 
way to the more intense even passion of anchored love, 
the morning light, the sunlit happiness. 

That was something that old Galbraith could no more 
affect than he could affect the sunrise itself, or the 
somber splendor of the night that seemed hung like some 
secure, magnificent drapery to insure their bliss. No — 
nothing could affect that. And, indeed, the bubble of 
Galbraith’s new mastery soon collapsed. 

It began with some presents that Roderic brought. 
He had actually brought a present for every soul upon 
the island, including Galbraith himself. Trifling things, 
these presents were in many cases, a ribbon, a toy, an im¬ 
plement or cigarettes, but it was the first time any one 
had thought of doing such a thing. Perhaps Roderic 
was a little above himself in the glow of joy in the 
experience. 

“ Very bad practice! ” had snarled old Galbraith after 
this surprising distribution at the steps of the veranda. 
“ Very bad practice! ” But the joy of the natives was 
great and more than ever Roderic became their idol. 
Orui with his new pipe went about from fare to fare, 
pointing out that only a man with the heart of a great 


213 


THE SMILE OF IRONY 

chief in him could be moved by a generosity so royal. 
He called attention to the fact that he had indicated as 
much theretofore, and that he could not be mistaken, 
since he was himself replete and throbbing with the 
blood of chiefs. 

It was directly after this that Galbraith definitely and 
finally abandoned the business and work of the island to 
Roderic and confined himself, when he left the veranda 
at all, to delving and pruning in the garden in the early 
morning and late afternoon; to puttering, in short, — the 
only resource to a once active man. By contrast Roderic 
was a whirlwind of activity, up early and down late; on 
the beach, at the sheds; violently interested in produc¬ 
ing perfect copra, in growing plenty of food, in keeping 
the natives happy in their childlike hearts, in achieving 
approximate perfection. 

That was all well enough. But what he could not 
understand was the faint ironical smile upon the old 
man’s lips at times, that gave it oddly the effect of being 
painted there. It was all as serious to Roderic as the 
hope of heaven to the pious, as victory to the general, as 
life itself. What was there in that to smile at? It per¬ 
plexed and it annoyed him, too. Many years had to 
come and pass before he could understand that smile, of 
one whose life was already lived, at the mist of illusion 
that enshrouds the lives just commencing, — the smile 
of the past that has already outlived its future. A strange 
pathos seems to cling about that old man in Roderic’s 
memory, and all his crotchety harshness, his bursts of 
intolerant irritation, remain in the memory only 
poignantly pathetic. 

It was at the beginning of the very hot weather, in 
December of that year, that Galbraith, careless of ex¬ 
posure, was stricken after a walk down to the sheds, 


214 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


was carried home and died in thirty hours without re¬ 
gaining mobility. 

He had time to mutter thickly to Roderic: 

Don’t be too active, lad, or ye’ll get sick of it and 
have Chinamen running the place,” — with the ghost 
of his old ironical smile. But to Allene, who was dis¬ 
tracted with grief, he was very gentle. 

Don’t mind, my lass,” he whispered. “ No use tak¬ 
ing me to Papeete. I shan’t get there. Live your life, 
lass, as you want it. That is the only satisfaction. Don’t 
grieve. My voyage is made. I am weary for rest. Bury 
me up on the cliffs.” 

And so this old adventurer from Dumfriesshire was no 
less certainly gathered to his fathers on a distant 
tropical island than he would have been, had death over¬ 
taken him in his native Scotland. 


CHAPTER XIX 


THE AIR THAT KILLS 

With the years that passed — how many years? 
Eleven? — Twelve? Who paused to count the years in 
the midst of happiness? — Roderic knew these things 
with intuitive certainty; he was master of the island, now 
his island; he was master of most of his environing cir¬ 
cumstances and master, he believed, of his fate. 

To master one’s fate is always tragic. But the tragedy 
is mercifully hidden from the young by a glistening veil 
of illusion, and hence their absurd delightful happiness. 
Roderic had continued absurdly happy. 

His island was prosperous as never before. The na¬ 
tives delighted in working for him, for he was a cheer¬ 
ful master and a kindly. The copra output had greatly 
increased. No hurricanes had come and few of the 
trees had died. Orui was still with him, that faithful 
gnarled old henchman, and also Akura. A new and a 
better schooner was his. He had found some large pearls. 
Comfort and happiness brooded over the island like 
tutelary deities radiating from the dazzling beauty of the 
sea and sky, from all the brilliant verdure of fecundity 
and growth. 

My little kingdom! ” he said to himself and in his 
secret heart he was very proud. 

In reading tales of chivalry to his little daughter, he 
was struck and engagingly fascinated by the manner in 


216 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


which this leader or that one in the Crusades — the God¬ 
freys, the Tancreds and the like — had carved out prin¬ 
cipalities for themselves. The carving out was what 
appealed to him. For does not every man, he reflected, 
great or small, clean or sordid, have to carve out his 
own domain in life? The remote, now legendary picture 
of his first landing upon the island, broken and wounded, 
cutting his way through the tangle, came swimming back 
to him mirage-like. 

“And this is your principality, isn’t it?” commented 
little Margaret, echoing his thought. “You carved it 
out, didn’t you, daddy? ” 

“Oh — yes — yes, sweetheart,” he answered half-ab- 
stractedly, half-glee fully, at her display of intelligence. 
“ Right you are, Maisie mane. We are all carvers like 
those old boys; only we don’t stop to think of it till a 
fairy girl like a certain Maisie I know comes along and 
points it out to us.” 

Whereat Maisie laughed with delicious pride in the 
sweep of her wisdom. And, “ Mummy,” she cried out 
joyfully, “ this is daddy’s principality and he carved it 
out for himself. Did you know that, mummy? ” 

“ Oh, yes, dear,” Allene, sitting near by in tranquil oc¬ 
cupation with a needle, answered her. “ I have known 
it all along.” And she sighed gently. Her own share in 
the carving did not even occur to him then. Allene shone 
to his eyes as the day when first he had seen her. Only 
her beauty seemed richer and her happy tranquillity was 
like a balsam. 

“Then why didn’t you tell me, mumsy?” protested 
Maisie in pouting indignation. “ As though I couldn’t 
keep a secret! ” And she was perplexed at the somewhat 
convulsive laughter of her parents. 

Yes, Roderic was happy. Even his garden he had 
beautified beyond the dreams — certainly beyond the 


THE AIR THAT KILLS 


217 


achievement — of Galbraith. The new rosebushes he 
had brought from Tahiti were prospering less than they 
might, but on the other hand he had made more of the 
dark-tongued flaming hibiscus bushes and had set out 
fresh frangipani trees. The crotons were better dis¬ 
tributed, with a richer symmetry, and he had conquered 
that beautiful and spiny pest, the Lantana, that formerly 
had tended to overcome all of Galbraith’s efforts. 

“ Those roses! ” he said to himself irritably. “ If only 
I had some good Massachusetts earth for them 1 ” But 
he had enriched their soil as best he could with fertilizer 
and they were, in any case, better than they had been in 
Galbraith’s day. 

It was in the late afternoons that he toiled in the gar¬ 
den, when the flowers seemed to emanate a farewell frag¬ 
rance before the coming of the night. So rich and 
delicate was the aroma, infinitely soothing yet faintly dis¬ 
turbing that — that it brought fancies to one’s head — 
nameless fancies — hardly to be described. It was a 
vague feeling — was it an unrest ? — like a tiny insect 
in a solid board drilling, drilling ever so faintly, into 
his consciousness, — small, light, insistent, causing a far 
off uneasiness, a remote nostalgia. 

Nostalgia? For what? It was long since he had re¬ 
ceived that letter from his father in response to his own 
announcing his marriage, that classic letter from his 
father that remained graven in his mind. 

My Dear Son : (it ran) 

I was glad to hear from you, though you can hardly expect 
me to approve of your course. It seems no wilder than I 
had come to expect of you. However, since you have made 
your bed, I suppose you must lie in it. Since in the words of 
the blessed Prayer Book you have left undone those things 
which you ought to have done, and done those things which 
you ought not to have done, I can only hope that at least now 


218 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


you will “fear God and keep his commandments, for this is 
the whole duty of man.” — Ecclesiastes XII. 13 . 

Your stepmother and I are fairly well, praise God, and we 
both wish you happiness. 

Your father, 

SWITHIN WhITFORD. 

That letter had brought an odd sort of rankling to his 
heart, a kind of humorous melancholy like the snub of 
a child to whom one was making affectionate advances. 
It somehow recalled Galbraith. 

“ That’s that,” he had muttered to himself with a laugh, 
after he had read the missive. But it was not “ that ” 
at all. It was something else. It was a wide, a hopeless 
gulf that brought fitful trains, fragments of thought. 
How endlessly different are people of the same blood! 
Could he conceivably write that way to little Margaret, 
even across seas of shame and blood? Indifference? 
No 1 That was one thing he was not capable of. Anger 
— fury — yes. But not indifference. A passionate 
stirring of the very fibers of his being, a very tremor of 
hot love for his wife and child, flesh of his flesh, his 
very life, had shaken him like a gust of wind. But 
that was now nine or ten years ago. It was after that 
letter that he had thrown himself into the feverish ac¬ 
tivity of life and work in which he had never paused or 
flagged. 

“ Never let up! ” he told himself with American vigor. 
“ Keep everlastingly at it.” He had planted more coco¬ 
nut trees, more taro and breadfruit. The citrus grove 
was largely increased. The golden oranges were gleam¬ 
ing richly in their setting of verdure. The barren 
Paumotu atolls paid high for oranges, which they could 
not grow on their reefs as he could grow them on his 
“ high ” island. With comparative ease he had obtained 
as much labor as he wanted. 


THE AIR THAT KILLS 


219 


He was always giving his people holidays and half- 
holidays and yet getting more work out of them than 
he believed others could have done, by sheer enthusiasm. 
There was a bonus system he had introduced which had 
proved a great success. At the end of the year a family 
might receive a sewing machine, or a phonograph or yards 
and yards of cloth as a prize for high productive power. 
One day he hoped to have a motion-picture machine. 
Yes, in his little world, Vitti-Fori was as surely king 
as though his ancestors had clubbed its people into sub¬ 
mission. 

And the acquisition of the eighty-ton schooner from 
the drunken Captain Langley at Fagatau, — but that was 
something he had no desire to dwell upon. The poor 
drunken beast was doubtless better with the smaller boat. 
He must have piled her up by now on some reef, — as 
he surely would have piled up the Allene. It was a per¬ 
fectly fair exchange. Langley was mad for ready 
money. The Allene, black against the dazzle of the 
beach, was a beauty. 

There were now little iron rails leading into the large 
copra-shed for the trucks to be wheeled out into the 
sun with the trays, and the price of copra was holding 
firm. The peculiar smell of the white coconut flesh was 
a perfume to his nostrils. He stood as well with the 
French authorities at Papeete as Galbraith had ever stood. 
No one ever bothered about his island, and that was good. 

The rumor of the great war had reached here as in 
every other corner of the world, but it was scarcely more ■ 
than a rumor. It was an European affair. For a time, to 
be sure, the seas were unsafe and there was a persistent 
fear of raiders said to be scouring the Pacific. There 
were some new formalities at Papeete concerning 
“ papers.” But in time the alarms subsided. The raiders 


220 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


had been swept away and the price of copra was rising. 
Yes, life was rich. 

For his home life was even more perfect than the 
rest. No other children had come to them, but with 
Allene and Maisie, — what a perfect trio of love! In¬ 
tellectually one did not stagnate. There was reading 
aloud, tales and stories for Margaret, history and poetry 
to Allene, though Allene and he were as much absorbed 
in “ Ivanhoe,” knight-errantry and fairy tales as was 
little Margaret herself. A halcyon life in the midst of a 
Paradise I 

Some unsuspected isle in the far seas,— 

Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas. 

He came upon the lines in “ Pippa Passes ” and paused 
with a thrill and a catch in his throat at their beauty. 

“ Doesn’t that describe it, Allene? ” he almost shouted, 
with a laugh. 

“ If only it could last like this forever! ” Allene nodded 
her lovely head with a grave radiance. His own words 
of some years past. It was now his turn to cry, “ Non¬ 
sense, darling! ” he leaped from his chair and kissed her. 

“ Why shouldn’t it last ? Don’t go getting notions, 
Allene. You are too wise for that.” 

“ Foolish me! ” Allene murmured contritely and held 
him closely for an instant with her arm about his neck. 
Curious — that a woman should “ settle” so after 
marriage. 

The garden was in a way the crowning achievement. 
He had paid little attention to it at first. But when once 
its state of comparative neglect smote his eyes, he had 
thrown himself into it with his accustomed energy and 
had changed it magically in a very brief space of time. 
It was on the trip when he had last taken Allene to 
Papeete that he had brought the roses. Only twice in 


THE AIR THAT KILLS 


221 


all those years had Allene aaccompanied him. She would 
not take Margaret, or leave her. The heartache and 
anxiety were too great. He no longer urged her to ac¬ 
company him. To tell the truth he was himself unhappy 
at the thought of leaving Margaret alone with Akura. 
Akura was growing old, — and after all she was a native. 

The roses simply would not flourish. In the midst of 
a richness of fecundity, a luxuriance of opulent growth, 
where it was said your cane would flourish if stuck into 
the ground, and its iron ferule take root, the roses seemed 
to droop and pine, — like creatures in exile. He longed 
with an absurd concentration to see them rich and full 
and beautiful, and yet they appeared somehow sickly and 
dissolute. Their fragrance was faint and their petals 
would shed at a touch. 

“ No stamina,” he murmured to himself, hardly know¬ 
ing why so trivial a fact should depress him out of all 
proportion to its signiflcance. And those same roses it 
was that led to an episode bringing the first genuine gloom 
into his new life. 

He had been putting wands into the ground and tying 
the plants upright with pandanus fiber, making the most 
of their little familiar fragrance, when on a sudden the 
vague thistledown brushings of undefined unrest, the 
faint worm-drill of nameless nostalgia solidified, took 
shape and substance with arresting weight and a curious 
clutching grip upon his consciousness. 

The scene before him faded into a blurred darkness 
and before his eyes, unseeing all that was about him,- 
lay stretched in a mysterious somber beauty the garden 
of his father, with its spread of color, of a duskier, 
less dazzling richness than his own hibiscus and frangi¬ 
pani, — its haunting aromas, so little obtrusive and yet 
so poignantly acute! A wide demesne it lay before him, 
— of roses velvety, and royal peony, of purple phlox so 


222 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


beautiful it clamped his heart to the point of aching. The 
rose lavender of cosmos, with its delicate firm flowers, 
seemed to wave before his eyes in a sort of aloof mockery. 
And through it all the ghostly fragrance of clematis and 
honeysuckle and the purer essence of the phlox came in 
waves about him. The box hedge enclosing all, the old 
mulberry tree brooding in the center, — how sound it 
all was, how perfect and how beautiful! His head swam. 
He shook himself suddenly like a dog upon emerging 
from the water. 

“ Good Lord! ” he said to himself aghast. ‘‘ What’s 
come over me ? ” He stared about him in a dazed be¬ 
wilderment. He stood stock-still; he moved swiftly, aim¬ 
lessly, about the garden and again stood still. Then, 
without quite knowing why he left the garden, abruptly 
he began walking down to the beach, paused, faced about 
and walked back. It was not into the house, however, 
that he went, but up the hill to the pool and the stone. 

For the first time in his life on the island, however, he 
was actually unaware of either pool or stone. Through 
the brush and jungle he continued half in a dream, yet 
with a machinelike energy in his limbs, down to the 
western side of the island where the reef and beach were 
joined, where years — an age of time — before, he had 
been cast up from the sea. Without thought, yet tingling 
at every nerve, he sat down upon a log and stared 
before him at the cobalt expanse of the Pacific. 

Staring and listening he sat there, watching the long 
oily undulations of the azure sea, listening to the surf 
beating beneath his feet, listening to the silence. In his 
mind was no thought, only a vague troubled uneasiness. 
Gradually, without his being quite aware of the process, 
pictures were forming in his mind, spasmodic discon¬ 
nected scenes of his earlier life as a sailor: his young¬ 
eyed wonder at Suva and in Australia — Billy of Bangor, 


THE AIR THAT KILLS 


223 


Flitch and the Alice — the day on the Boston wharves. 
Then without volition the floating tentacles of his mind 
seemed to fasten as by inevitable attraction upon his 
boyhood home at Adams Rock: the lamplit room — that 
garden with its northern calm and shadowed beauty — 
the darkly vivid hedge — the drip and shade of the mul¬ 
berry— the garden! 

It was as though he were intent upon something 
wholly different, some other employment or preoccupa¬ 
tion, and those scenes and pictures forced themselves be¬ 
fore his mind’s eye, unbidden, forbidden. His landing 
upon the island, however, the culmination of all that 
past, was wholly and, it seemed afterward, strangely 
absent from these obtruding visions. Only an obscure, 
confused sense of guilt clung mistily about them all, like 
some nebulous drapery swaying and blowing. 

How long he sat there he was not certain, but it was 
long after darkness overtook him and the young moon, 
riding high over the ocean and silvering a track of fan¬ 
tastic splendor, careless of any human eye, suddenly smote 
him with a consciousness of something like erring tru¬ 
ancy. He leaped up and turned homeward. 

Allene was still sitting up and he greeted her with 
something forcedly cheery, muttering a word or two of 
his rambling around like a bat in the night,” to which 
she responded monosyllabically. But her eyes followed 
him intently. 

He went to bed and awoke to a brilliant morning with 
an eager desire for work. He was at the copra-shed 
before Orui and the others had got there. He paused 
long enough to reflect abstractedly on his strange obses¬ 
sion of the preceding evening and on a sudden he found 
himself laughing at his own absurd vagary. 

‘‘ Moonshine! ” he murmured whimsically to himself 
and, as Orui came trudging toward him with a greeting. 


224 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


he began with bright energy the exposition of an idea on 
how to improve the quality of the copra. 

“ You see, Orui,’’ he explained, “ the better the copra, 
the better our reputation and the bigger the price. That 
means a bigger bonus for all hands, eh, Orui ? 

Orui declared he understood perfectly and threw him¬ 
self with his usual faithful alacrity into the ideas and 
wishes of his master and friend. 

“ After all,” thought Roderic, as he left the shed an 
hour later, “ there is nothing either so real or so excit¬ 
ing as the price of copra! ” 

The old tenor of his life went on from that hour, the 
work of his island all day long, with a persistent activity 
that belied old Galbraith’s prediction that Chinamen 
would be running the place if it continued, — and the 
pleasant domestic life of evenings. He resumed the 
readings aloud with energy, “ Robin Hood ” to little 
Margaret until bedtime and Gibbon’s “ Decline and Fall ” 
to Allene. It was some weeks later, when his ear grew 
tired of Gibbon’s grandiose periods, that he took up a 
tiny book of verse, “ The Shropshire Lad,” and read 
the simple lyrics to Allene. He had scanned them him¬ 
self some time earlier and now on a sudden he craved 
them as an antidote to Gibbon. He felt sure that Allene 
also would enjoy their clear simplicity. 

He read half the small book without pausing, except 
for brief comments, skipping here and there and only 
glancing up now and then for the answering look of 
Allene’s appreciation. Then he came upon two quatrains 
that ran- 


Into my heart an air that kills 
From yon far country blows; 

What are those blue remembered hills. 
What spires, what farms are those? 



THE AIR THAT KILLS 


225 


That is the land of lost content, 

I see it shining plain, 

The happy highways where I went 
And cannot come again. 

He had read it in the same voice he had read the 
others, but his pause after it was inexplicably longer. 

“ Wait a minute,” he said, with a strange excitement 
in his voice, “ I’ll read that again.” 

He reread the plain, unadorned verses ana somehow 
every word seemed to catch like a barbed hook in his 
heart. He could hardly utter the last lines, his voice, 
thickened over them so — peculiarly. He did not go on. 
He started suddenly from a brown study of which he 
had been unaware. “ And cannot come again.” The 
words seemed to reverberate through all his being. 

‘‘ By George ! By George! ” he muttered somewhat 
thickly. “ Don’t think I’ll read any more. Time for 
bed.” He got up and walked aimlessly twice or thrice 
about the room. On a sudden he paused behind Allene, 
bent over quickly and kissed her hair. He did not see 
her face. But on the back of her hand, which lay mo¬ 
tionless in her lap, he thought he saw something glisten¬ 
ing— a tear? Well, those verses were — stunning! He 
went into his room and to bed. It was some time before 
Allene came in. 

No word was exchanged between them that night. 


CHAPTER XX 


THE RETURN OF BRUCE 

He felt lackadaisical and curiously abstracted the next 
morning. In his mind the lines of Housman, ‘‘ Into my 
heart an air that kills/’ were forming into a sort of song 
to a strange melancholy tune that he had not heard 
for twenty years, — something that he thought was the 
tune of Tell me not in mournful numbers.” ' All that 
day the words of the quatrains hummed themselves inside 
him to their dirgelike melody. Oh, it was damnable! 
Why should a sound man be built like that ? 

He walked down to that spot on the western side of 
the island as the only way to shake off the absurd, exas¬ 
perating mood and gazed emptily at the ocean, at yon far 
country of his suddenly corrupted imagination. What 
^id he see? Nothing — he could not have told. A con¬ 
fusion of fragmentary scenes, pictures dissolving, a 
nameless farrago, a northern garden, — of all asinine 
things to bother about! 

The mood then gradually waned, but only to return. 
He found himself, at the back of his demesne, sitting 
there for minutes or for hours and gazing outward. He 
went to Papeete and he returned, but always he would 
fall back into the habit, like a vice, of going out, always 
alone, unaccompanied. It was like a small shameful 
secret, and he hated it and himself. Why couldn’t he 
speak of it to Allene? But somehow he could not. 
America, he heard, had entered the war and for a moment 


THE RETURN OF BRUCE 


227 


he thrilled to the thought. But it was an affair of volun¬ 
teers, for unmarried youngsters. Even if he were there — 
with a wife and child — it was scarcely likely to reach 
him. It was very remote. His orbit was fixed. It hardly 
touched his thoughts as he gazed out from his station 
seaward. 

One day,' as he was returning in the dusk along the 
path that his own footsteps had by this time beaten down, 
he saw a single figure hurrying on before him through 
the brush. Instantly he knew it was Allene. 

His first impulse was to pause and let her reach the 
house before he ventured farther. But he felt instinc¬ 
tively that that was futile. Allene knew. She must have 
known all along. If Allene had caught him in something 
vicious, he could not have been more contrite, more 
painfully ashamed. Nevertheless he quickened his steps 
and followed her. But Allene was also hurrying fast. 
She had reached the crest of the slope. 

‘‘ Allene! ” he called after her. She hurried on more 
swiftly. “Allene!” he cried again. “Wait! Wait, 
dear! ” 

She paused, and it happened to be near the stone, the 
old Wishing Stone of their early years. She paused and 
turned slowly toward him, but with gaze bent downward 
as though she were the culprit. He hastened his steps 
toward her, and as she lifted her eyes he saw they were 
filled and streaming with tears. He gripped her tightly 
in his arms. 

“ Allene! ” he murmured in abashed, shamefaced 
misery. “I — I didn’t know you — you knew — minded 
my — walks — alone — helps me to think — to turn 

things over-” and he stopped helplessly. He could 

not talk that way to Allene. She was weeping softly 
against his shoulder. 

“You — you know, don’t you, dear,-” he began 




228 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


again, but she put a cold hand over his lips and shook her 
head pathetically. 

“ Don’t say anything, dear,” she sobbed softly, 

piteously. “ I know — everything-I know. Let us 

go home! ” 

They walked on in silence, he with his arm about her, 
his heart thumping achingly against his ribs. And yet 
there was within him a sensation of vague relief. No 
more of this sickening concealment. But what was it 
Allene knew, or understood, when he hardly under¬ 
stood himself ? 

In the house little Margaret greeted them with a foun¬ 
tainlike jet of eager inquiry. 

“ Where have you two been all this while without 
me? ” she came bounding forward and hung about them. 
“What’s the matter, mummy? Oh, you haven’t been 
crying, have you ? ” And she glanced up to her father’s 
face. “ Something in your eye? Let me see it, mumsy. 
I can get anything out of people’s eyes. My hand is so 
steady. I got something out of Akura’s eye only last 
week.” 

Allene and Roderic signalled to each other piteously 
with their eyes and Margaret was no doubt taken in, 
for she chattered on with no sign of disturbance. She 
was off to bed finally with the usual ritual of hugs, kisses 
and “ sweet dreams,” and they drifted back into the 
long living room, lamplit and dim in the far corners. 

Now at last the floodgates would be opened. They 
would talk. They must talk! He must say something. 
But — what could he say? 

What could he say? How could he explain or even 
touch upon this growing longing, this mad desire to 
go away from Allene and Margaret? He had all the 
instruments of happiness, all that man could wish for, — 



THE RETURN OF BRUCE 


229 


activity, work, success, plenty, love. He was living in 
a Paradise and he wanted-what ? Moonshine! 

“ How-how that child is growing,” he finally 

blurted out and felt the shame of inadequacy after a 
great effort, like an athlete who funks his hurdle. There 
was a momentary quiver about Allene’s lips and then 
she replied with a febrile energy, 

“And such a lovely nature!-So generous and 

full of enthusiasm! She thinks of everybody and every¬ 
thing. Akura thinks she is taking care of her, but really 
she is taking care of Akura. She knows the place for 

everything-she can find anything-” Allene’s 

hands were clenched, so that her knuckles showed white 
as she ran on rapidly, until on a sudden her lips twitched 
and abruptly she moved out to the veranda. 

Roderic started to follow her but a heavy load of 
misery seemed to press him down into the nearest chair. 

“ Lord, what can I say to her? ” he demanded of him¬ 
self with harsh self-torture. “A garden?-” he fell 

aghast before the very thought, the jejune inadequacy 

of the thing. “ My father’s old garden-why should 

that take such hold on me? Why should I care? Yet 

I seem crazy to see it, to stand there again-1 must 

be going daft — daft! ” Spasmodically he clapped his 
hand to his forehead. It was damp with perspiration. 
With an effort he forced himself to rise and follow Al- 
lene out to the veranda. She was leaning with both 
hands upon the railing and gazing upward. He stood 
beside her in silence for a space, his heart beating furi¬ 
ously, his throat dry. 

“ Those stars,” he felt as though talking in a cloud of 
dust, “ they look as if they were at home here.” What 
an effort it had suddenly become to talk to Allene — of 
all people! 

She nodded her head and continued gazing upward. 










230 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


‘‘ The pull of home! ” Suddenly, as with a little ex¬ 
plosion, the phrase burst into his mind, and instantly he 
fought it with ferocity. That phrase, like a bright light, 
abruptly illumined Myrtle Thornley, his boyhood; all his 
past loomed rich and golden. 

“ This is my home! ” he said to himself, or a voice 
within him seemed to be quarrelsomely, hotly arguing. 
^‘What’s that other to me? — My father’s letter! ” He 
remembered every word of it. What do I care? ” The 
voice persisted doggedly. 

But even at that moment he knew that the roots of 
the past were dragging at his being like chains and 
cables. He groaned inwardly. 

Oh,” he thought miserably, “ is it because I broke 
away so sharply that it pulls on me so hard — dragging 

— dragging — of all things the beastly garden!-If 

I could only see it! ” 

Instead of drawing nearer, he seemed farther than 
ever away from speech with Allene. A profound misery 
of shame engulfed him. Yet there beside him was stand¬ 
ing Allene-his Allene! 

On a sudden he seized her shoulders and pressed his 
hot cheek to hers and so they stood for a time in a tumult 
of strange emotions, overawed as though in the presence 
of mysteries. It was a new revelation of life, torturing, 
inexplicable. 

By a sort of tacit agreement they moved indoors in 

silence. They could not talk.-No, they could not 

talk. 

The next day and the next he went about his work 
with a kind of galvanized energy, with burning eyes. 
What was he, what had he accomplished, he inquired 
harshly of himself in gusts of self-depreciation? In 
the youth and headiness of his blood he had labored 
ferociously — in his way — and what was the upshot 





THE RETURN OF BRUCE 


231 


of it all? Who would ever know or hear of him? He 
was a prisoner of life, not its master; nobody; an insect 
crawling in the infinite void between heaven and earth. 

No strong man was ever a prisoner of life. No! 

The astonishing thing to him was how persistently not 
only the thought of going remained with him obdurate, 
but how surely his entire attitude embraced the idea, 
took it for granted. He was actually shaping the work, 
the routine of the island to the possibility, the certainty, 
of his going! 

“ A man must have an organization that can function 
whether he is there or not,” he told himself. And more 
and more he guided the work, Orui, and the other 
younger men, so that they should know their tasks 
whether he was there to initiate them or not. 

He fondly believed that Allene was unconscious of 
any of that. It hurt him to conceal and yet he was de¬ 
veloping a cunning technique of concealment. It was 
only long after that he knew that nothing was concealed 
from Allene. 

The problem that troubled him most was the matter 
of the schooner. If he were to take the schooner away, 
and anything happened to him in the distance, then Al¬ 
lene was almost certainly cut off on her island. That 
was a condition unthinkable. He paused upon that 
thought and it racked and tortured him for days. He 
hit upon a plan finally, however, that seemed to dispose 
in a manner of that difficulty. 

He would take the schooner with the smallest pos¬ 
sible number of men to Papeete, and there he would 
leave her in charge of the consul and the harbor master, 
and find work for the men. 

If the consul did not hear from him by a given time, 
say ten months or a year, he was to find a skipper and 
a crew, including at least some of his own Kanakas, who 


232 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


knew the island, and send the boat to Allene, — together 
with a letter which he would prepare. That would make 
clear to Allene her resources and what she was to do. 

His very soul seemed to darken at the thought of 
such a procedure: Allene in the remote impersonal hands 
of consuls and public officials; Allene who had looked 
with matchless confidence for all things to him! The 
thought was unbearable. Yet, the very next day his 
mind was revolving the many sides and angles of the plan. 
It was the only way, the best way. Men were constantly 
obliged to arrange, to plan like that. Men could not be 
tied like mules by a tether. Besides, that was merely 
a kind of insurance. Why should he not return in far 
less than any such provisional period? But why was he 

going at all ?-Ah, that — that no longer admitted 

of argument, of questions or answers. That was as 
inevitable as doom. Yet the thought of the actual step 
itself ate into his vitals like a cancer. And he had be¬ 
lieved himself to be master of his fate! 

A shout that came from the beach and startled the 
workers at the copra house like a cry of alarm suddenly 
arrested every ear, eye and hand within its sound. 

Roderic, who had been bending over a copra tray 
with a perspiring face, looked up sharply and what he 
saw alarmed even him. There were still legends of 
mysterious raiders on the seas, though it was long since 
any had actually been heard of. 

A trim black schooner, almost the counterpart of his 
own, save that she was smaller, was rounding the point of 
the reef with just enough sail for draught, and with com¬ 
plete assurance she was standing in for the lagoon. Her 
canvas glistened white in the dazzling sun and everything 
and every one on her exceedingly trim deck stood out 
brilliantly. A man in white drill was standing negli¬ 
gently on the forepeak with his hands in his jacket 



THE RETURN OF BRUCE 


233 


pockets and about midway in the lagoon he issued a brief 
order. Her bit of white was magically furled and down 
dropped the anchor with a splash. Gently then the 
boat swung around to her cable like a turning duck on 
a pond, and before you knew it she was at rest, pointing 
her nose peacefully outward. 

The natives in a frenzy of excitement like children 
pelted madly to the beach. Roderic remained alone at 
the shed, gazing on the manoeuvres as if spellbound. 

“ Whoever he is,’^ he muttered to himself, he makes 
himself at home here. A trader — or a buyer.” It was 
years since any one had put in at the island. 

Then with a nonchalant air but with a disturbing fever 
in his limbs, he too strolled down to the beach. 

A dinghy came gliding to the pierhead with the white 
man in the stern sheets propelled by four Kanaka oars¬ 
men, probably all his crew. “ Style,” thought Roderic. 

The white man, he saw even before the natives shouted 
it out, was Bruce McClung. 

His first impulse was a savage one, of fierce con¬ 
temptuous anger, to warn him away from the island. 
But that W'as only momentary, like a dancing shadow. 

‘‘ If he can afford to come here,” he thought ironically. 

I can afford to receive him. Wonder what brings him 
here.” Then swiftly the thought of Allene flashed into 
his mind. Allene must not remain for an instant un¬ 
warned. He caught a native boy of fourteen by the 
shoulders. 

“ Run to the house,” he told him brusquely, as fast 
as you can, find Akura and tell her to tell my wife that 
Bruce has come.” 

The boy was off like a dart. 

It was only later he learned that no sooner had Akura 
imparted her intelligence than Allene paused, stood still 


234 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


for a moment and then for the first time in her life 
fainted dead away. 

Bruce was engagingly frank and debonair as he leaped 
lightly from the skiff to the hot boards of the pier. 

“ Hello, Whitford! ” he called out genially, and though 
he did not put out his hand he somehow contrived to give 
an impression of friendly heartiness before the staring 
natives. 

“What brings you here?” cried Roderic in a voice 
in which a sort of loud hollowness conceals the want of 
warmth among civilized men. 

“ Frankly ” — Bruce began nearly every sentence with 
“ frankly ” — “I wanted to see the old place again. I 
was in the neighborhood. Besides — I buy things, copra, 
shell, anything. These are times of high prices and 
quick turnovers — as you know,” he added suavely. 

“ A real trader,” reflected Roderic. “ He has no 
shame.” Aloud he said. 

“ Yes, I know. But as you know, I have my own boat 
and ship my own product.” He revelled childishly in 
the possessive pronouns. 

“ Oh, yes, of course,” Bruce responded easily, looking 
over Rodericks shoulder toward the house. “ But, 
frankly, I might save you a trip. Why should you jam 
the schooner to Papeete when — if I can make it worth 
your while to — to sell to me ? ” 

In Rodericks heart like adamant was forming the 
resolution to transact no business with his quondam 
enemy. Was he come back as a kind of nemesis to haunt 
his life — and at this time? But on a sudden all the 
darting and whirring of these thoughts in his brain was 
stopped as might be a clockwork mechanism. Like a 
bar of iron came this single chillingly prominent idea 
thrusting in the midst of the arrested apparatus of his 
mind: 


THE RETURN OF BRUCE 


Bruce might carry him to Papeete, the first stage of 
his journey, without his taking his own schooner away 
at all! 

That meant greater security for Allene. For at a 
pinch, if need were, the Kanakas could sail the boat to 
the nearest of the Paumotus. Allene would have the boat. 
It was a heavenly solution of his perplexing problem. 

But — trust himself in Bruce’s hands ? Well, why 
not? Was he afraid of Bruce? That was absurd. But 
what to do with him in the meanwhile? 

“ Well,” he finally emerged from the stirring activity 
of his silence, “ let me think it over. You go down to 
the shed with Orui — you know your way — and look 
things over. I must run up to the house. I’ll come down 
there in a jiffy.” Allene’s name had not thus far been 
mentioned between them. 

With a rapid nervous step and head bowed, Roderic 
then struck out toward the house. His mind was churn¬ 
ing like a mill race. The sudden and strange appearance 
of Bruce created a diversion in midst of the tension of 
their lives. But abruptly it had also brought forward a 
climax, — forward to a cruel starkly naked prominence. 
How Allene would take it — what would happen — those 
were the queries that kept dancing about in his brain in 
a medley of kaleidoscopically changing lights and 
shadows. But there was a driving intoxication in his 
blood that flooded him madly and made his heart beat 
furiously. To-day would settle it all, — everything. 

Allene was reclining on the white bed in her room and 
her pallor was visible even in that dim curtained light. 
That gave a brief poignant stab to his heart. Margaret 
was beside her mother, chattering softly and soothing 
her mother’s hand. 

Run out into the garden and play,” he told her hur¬ 
riedly; “ or feed the hens-I want to talk to mummy.” 



236 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


Yes — daddy — ” her voice was pitifully subdued 
like a muted string, and she who was all gayety, like the 
very spirit of joy, looked at him with the searching, 
baffled eyes of childhood caught in the maze of uncom¬ 
prehended grown-up troubles, a picture that remains to 
haunt the grown-up eyes for long afterward. 

Allene smiled faintly, with an effort. He kissed her, 
for with an ache in his heart he felt instinctively what 
that smile cost her. 

“ Isn’t it queer his coming here,” she murmured 
gently, with constrained self-control. What does it 
mean ? ” 

‘‘ Oh — he! ” It seemed a great effort to talk of 
Bruce now. “ He’s a trader — buying things, copra, 
shell. Come to snoop around — see what he could pick 
up.” She shook her head slowly and looked into her 
husband’s eyes. What he thought she meant was, 

“ You couldn’t do that, Roderic, if you had left this 
olace under similar circumstances.” 

He’s a born trader, all right,” he said, as if answer¬ 
ing her, with a brief laugh. “But what can you do? 
You can’t drive people off the place with a shotgun. If 

he can afford to come — I guess we can afford-” and 

again he laughed briefly. 

“ We must have him up of course — we couldn’t treat 
him like — like-” 

“Oh, certainly!” he caught her up. “Nothing else 
to do — and unless he has sense enough to sleep in his 
boat, we’ll have to give him a bed, too, if he’s staying.” 

“Of course,” she murmured with a barely audible in¬ 
tensity of tone and a strange new gleam in her eyes. For 
a moment perhaps she was thinking that this episode 
might divert Roderic from his purpose. But the very 
next instant she was swiftly disillusioned. 

“ You know,” he pursued quickly yet with a kind of 




THE RETURN OF BRUCE 


237 


pressing heavy soberness. “ His coming this way gives 
me an idea. I want you to listen, dear, because there’s 
something that’s been bothering my head a good deal. 
It needn’t worry you because I’ve thought everything 
out carefully — thought all around it.” She lay perfectly 
still, watching his face with a tragic intentness. 

“ I’ve got to run over home,” he went on quickly after 
a pause. “ Been thinking of it a good while. The war, 

you know — it makes a man feel like — like a cad-” 

yet, though he meant every word he said, he had never 
before felt so much like one as at that moment. A 
strange unfamiliar person was speaking through his lips, 
some one else, — some one he despised abjectly, held 
in deepest contempt and loathing. Allene’s lips trembled 
faintly and her eyes on his were unfathomably tragic. 
No, by Heaven! it was not he — and yet he went on — 

not he — some one else- “ I don’t suppose I can 

do anything, but I want to be there. They wouldn’t 
want me, anyway — married man and all that. Want 
to see my father, too.” Ah, that helped, that about the 
father. That made it a shade easier. “Ought to do 
it — it’s been growing upon me.” 

Could he tell her of the bizarre folly of the garden; 
of this nameless pull that drew his heart even though it 
clung to her? No! Of that he simply could not bring 
himself to speak. That was something hidden, obscure. 

“ The problem,” he ran on more feverishly “ was 
what to do with the schooner. Of course, it won’t be 

for long, but to leave the schooner in Papeete-1 

didn’t like to do that, you see? Now — this Bruce 
coming — happy accident. Go with him to Papeete,” he 
pursued, simulating an air of happy triumphant solution. 
“ The schooner remains here — and I’ll be back before 
you know it! ” His brain, all his body, reeled as after 
a tremendous effort. 





238 


THE CALL OF THE PAST 


He touched her hand. It was cold as ice. Her breast 
heaved as if in pain, but she uttered no sound. Now, 
he thought, for the paroxysm, the crisis. Needlelike 
points of heat broke out over all his body. 

Of course you’ll have to go, dear.” He was startled 
as by some sudden explosive manifestation of nature. It 
was Allene’s voice, her accustomed voice, dry yet soft 
as always. He could not credit his ears. That’s 
natural. But how are you going to get back, with the 
schooner remaining here?” That’s natural, she had 
said — natural! 

“ How ? trust me for that! ” he cried out, with a 
burst of shrill almost hysterical laughter throwing back 
his head. “ I’ll manage that all right. Always some¬ 
body — a trader or some one — make it worth his while 
■-I’ll get back all right! ” 

A moment before he had seemed in the grasp of the 
abyss, in a hopeless struggle with tragic dreariness. But 
she took it like that! He seemed to himself to be float¬ 
ing upon lifting waves of sunlit exuberance, intoxication. 
“ Oh, that will be easy! ” he laughed again. “ I’ll be 
back right enough — before you have time to miss me 
much — that’s simple enough.” 

Only a dull underlying pain within him, beneath all 
the laughter and all the words, steeped his triumphal 
solution in the color of dark misery. He rose abruptly, 
then bent forward and kissed Allene hurriedly. 

“ Must get down to Mr. Bruce,” he muttered against 
her cheek. And just as he was about to lift his head, 
Allene’s arms suddenly enclosed and drew it toward her 
heart. The tears gushed from her eyes and a storm of 
deep sobs shook her. 

“ Oh, Allene, — Allene 1 ” he protested frenziedly, 
miserably. “ I thought you were going to be brave and 
sensible.” And how he hated himself as he uttered the 



THE RETURN OF BRUCE 


239 


words! Only her heart-rending sobs were audible for 
the space of perhaps, a minute. “If you feel that way,” 
he began dully. 

“ Go, go, Roderic. Please leave me-Fm all 

right,” she cried with sudden volcanic energy, releasing 
him. “ Go down to Bruce and ask him up. Don’t mind 
me — it’s only — do go, dear,” and she turned spas¬ 
modically toward the wall, waving him away with her 
hand. He gazed at her as through a cloud of smoke for 
an instant, then softly he stole out of the room. 

And the Roderic that walked down the flagstoned 
colonnade of palms had never before set foot upon this 
island. He was a stranger, an outcast from distant parts, 
walking for the first time on alien unfamiliar ground. 



PART IV 


MAISIE 

CHAPTER XXI 

THE LAND OF LOST CONTENT 

On the steamer to San Francisco the rising and fading 
of the island home to his mind’s eye went on like a 
play which he watched at times with the air of a 
detached spectator. 

At times his heart would suddenly stretch back toward 
Allene and Maisie with the sharp acute pains of ineffable 
longing. And then he would plunge into eager conver¬ 
sation with men in the smoking room or with some 
woman on deck, and all would recede and all would 
fade to a dim and cool remoteness. Why had he not 
taken Allene with him? Impossible! Allene meant 
Maisie, — the family. This was escape, adventure, the 
Dream. To the dream those parts of himself, wife and 
child, were strangers. So was the island. 

“ That is Eden,” he would tell himself, after being 
stimulated by contact and talk. Yes, it was Eden, that 
island abode of his, but how monotonous Eden could be! 
Here he was going toward clash and fire, toward music 
and sound, toward discord and change! 

A spirit of ebullient youth would fitfully light upon 
him, of daydreams and the vivid prismatic lights of as¬ 
piration. Oh, it was glorious, glorious to set forth into 


242 


MAISIE 


life again! He could have shouted for the joyous excite¬ 
ment of it. 

It was no personal attachment or affection that sus¬ 
tained the wings which carried him homeward, but rather 
a general indefinite anticipation of renewal. He saw 
himself standing in the old garden of his boyhood, and 
its very air was charged with a new, an electric happiness 
that engulfed him. Life seemed to begin afresh, gushing 
forth in myriad fountains. 

Irifo my heart an air that kills 
From yon far country blows . , . 

sang itself in his mind. The air no longer ‘‘ killed ” 
as it had done on the island, but it did choke the heart 
with a delicious congestion, and yon far country beck¬ 
oned, beckoned- 

Only to touch the soil of it I He remembered reading 
of men kissing the earth upon their return or arrival 

in the land that was dear to them. Well, he-no, 

he was no lunatic, no temperamental fool. But in his 
heart he knew that he could do the like when he landed 
on home ground, if only no one were looking on. 

The customs officials in San Francisco and the dazzle 
of faces precluded that, but his body quivered and his 
legs were a trifle unsteady when he touched the landing 
pier. Fellow passengers were addressing him, saying 
good-by to him, but he only nodded abstractedly with a 
set smile upon his face, not daring to speak, so full was 
his heart of tumult and emotions at uncertain equilibrium. 
He paused not a moment more than was necessary at 
San Francisco; only bought some clothes and drove to 
the station. 

It was not until the overland train was rushing him 
homeward across the desert and the plains, the train with 




THE LAND OF LOST CONTENT 


243 


its magnificent security of the steel and power of civili¬ 
zation, his civilization, that he found himself staring out 
of the window of the car, seeing not the desert or the 
plains, but a group of seriated pictures of home. . . . 
The home not of Adams Rock, but his island — Allene, 
his departure; and a clear, unearthly reality framed every 
detail. 

In a flash he suddenly knew why Allene had fainted 
when Akura had imparted the news of Bruce’s arrival. 
That had been mysterious, troubling to him, a thing that 
had loomed enshrouded in a cloud of suspicion, and then 
receded under the turmoil of distraction. But now he 
knew. It had nothing to do with Bruce. No! It was 
because intuitively she saw that this coming had solved 
his, Roderic’s, perplexity — made it easier for him to 
depart. 

The uncanny knowledge of that gentle young woman! 
On a sudden she seemed more dear to him than ever be¬ 
fore. Involuntarily his hand went up to his heart, as 
if to soothe the sudden pain that wrung it. 

That leave-taking!- No, that was one thing he 

would not suffer himself to recall. The look of Allene, 
her white dry-eyed rigidity when she stood facing him 
at the last moment in their room, taut, something like 
her father. Yes, she had seemed to overawe him with 
greatness, to dwarf him. Her words, so strange as they 
fell from her lips, when for the hundredth time he had 
assured her of his early, nay immediate return, of his 
actual repugnance to going. 

“ That — that is not the truth. Don’t say it, my 
darling,” she had said with a sort of terrible ferocity of 
calmness that froze him. “ Don’t let us do that now. 
We haven’t done it before. When I see you I shall know 
that you have come back.” 

Enigmatic words, that seemed meaningless at times. 



244* 


MAISIE 


and yet how they haunted and tormented him! What 
was this desire to go that had overpowered even what 
he had felt after that cryptic utterance of Allene’s? It 
was incomprehensible. He only knew that he was still 
in the grip of it, enchained by it. And Maisie, with her 
great inquiring eyes, clinging, clinging, Maisie! 

“ I had to go I ” The thud of the wheels kept repeating 
endlessly over and over. “ I had to go, I had to go! 
The gigantic monster of steel and steam and iron that 
was carrying him, rushing at a headlong speed across 
the plains, was but an instrument obedient to that im¬ 
perious desire in his heart. His thoughts kept fleetingly 
reverting to Allene, but he thrust them back. Deep in 
his heart was the hard conviction, the unflinching cer¬ 
tainty, that he must go back to his youth — to his garden 
— alone! 

Bruce, that devil Bruce! Did he understand? Did 
he know? He knew, at all events, that Roderic had 
taken the steamer at Papeete. Would he have the 
audacity to go back to the island in his absence and an¬ 
noy Allene, torment her with insinuations of her hus¬ 
band’s desertion, harass and plague her with his presence? 

He felt on a sudden bitterly aggrieved that a man could 
not leave his home in quest of something vague that he 
could not name, without leaving a host of torturing pains 
and problems to solve themselves as best they might. 

His goal was drawing hourly nearer. The chill nights 
of early November sent delicious shivers through his 
frame. To feel cold again! It was unpleasant. He was 
no longer accustomed to it. But it brought up odd surges 
of resistance, of atavistic energies bred under its long 
habit in his forbears. 

The sight of the great cities began crashing upon him 
like gigantic waves or bombardments. Kansas City, 
Chicago! His senses reeled under the impact of them 


THE LAND OF LOST CONTENT 


245 


as they might have done under the discharge of artillery, 
under the crepitation of a million drums. His eagerness 
to reach his destination became so poignant he could 
hardly eat during the last twenty-four hours of his 
journey. Constantly, excitedly, he kept gazing out of 
the window. 

The island had receded to a faintness that troubled 
now with scarcely the dimmest of memories. 

Back Bay!- South Station!- The magic 

of familiar names! A roar and a hubbub, a blur of peo¬ 
ple, women, men in khaki, women in uniforms, people, 
home! A rushing intoxication, unbelievably real, incred¬ 
ibly alien,-overwhelming! 

He stood for a time in the maze of the old life that 
appeared so distractingly new, gazing about like the 
bewildered yokel of comedy at the rush of figures, at 
the booths in the pandemoniac gloom, at the infinite busy¬ 
ness of the men and women of whom he was a part, — 
of whom he never could be a part. His two heavy port¬ 
manteaus, his only luggage, were resting beside him on 
either side. Porters nagged him from time to time but 
he hardly heeded them. Then suddenly he realized that 
they were the one element in this surge of humanity that 
showed the faintest interest in his existence. He smiled 
sheepishly at a gnarled brown elderly negro porter, who 
seized his bags and demanded amicably whether he 
desired a taxi. 

“ Yes,” he answered with deliberation, “ a taxi.” 

“ Where to, sir? ” 

“ Where to? ” he repeated. “ To the North Station.” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

Where but to the North Station could he go? Boston 
was roaring about him, but the North Station was all 
he could think of. That was the way Home! 

Boston seemed somehow a terrifying spectacle. He 





246 


MAISIE 


had expected for some reason, perhaps because he knew 
it so well, that it would appear smaller, familiar. But 
now as he drove through it, it seemed a rushing torrent 
almost as alien as all the rest of the cities he had seen. 
San Francisco had actually seemed more familiar. What 
was this quality in American cities that made them seem 
as of another planet? He could not tell. State Street, 
Washington Street, Bowdoin Square, — they were the 
same, yet- But perhaps it was he who was differ¬ 

ent ? But how could he be ? It was high noon, yet a mist 
as of night seemed to envelop his vision, his very soul. 
A leaden sky; was it always like this? He remembered 
hot burning sunshine. 

From the North Station he got a train almost immedi¬ 
ately for Adams Rock, Marblehead and Salem, and 
something almost like tranquility settled upon him once 
he heard those names and took his seat. Yet he was 
throbbing with eagerness, too, eagerness for the 
strange old-fashioned silent town that was his home. 
From that vantage point life would appear more normal. 
If only he could have been carried there in his sleep! 
Well, he would be there soon enough. 

He saw a vision suddenly of the tranquil old streets, 
old houses and new, tea rooms and gift shops, motor cars, 
the harbor, — the harbor that was unadulterated by 
commerce, dotted with small pleasure craft and white 
sails, and the peculiar smell of the sea so different from 
the smell of his own beach. The sudden olfactorv mem- 
ory brought a sharp pang of longing, a stab of nostalgia 
for his island home, peculiarly intermingled with his 
eagerness for Adams Rock, — just now, too, at the end 
of his long journey! It was damnable! Stonily he gazed 
out of the window and warned himself not to be a fool. 

Adams Rock 1 Adams Rock I It was impossible — 
untrue. But there he was with his bags upon the con- 



THE LAND OF LOST CONTENT 


247 


Crete platform, alone, strangely forlorn. Only some half- 
dozen people descended with him from the train. They 
hurried off through the chill November air. He was 
alone. 

“Where to?” creaked a shrivelled man of perhaps 
sixty from a dilapidated Ford that struck him as irre¬ 
mediably ugly in its old age. 

“ Where to? ” Why was every one asking him that so 
pointedly? That was of the innermost mystery, yet 
that was what they all, drivers and porters, sought to 
lay bare at once. 

“To the past — to romance — you fools!” Was 
what he wanted to answer. “ To something more urgent 
than happiness, to the end of the gnawing desire, to— 
to-” 

“To the hotel, sir?” 

“ Yes, to the hotel,” came as from a turmoil through 
which he had to labor to make himself heard. The old 
man, more spry than might have been imagined, leaped 
down, seized his bags and flung them in mechanically to 
a rattle of tin, and muttered in his grizzled dejected 
mustache. 

“ To the Revere House— , yes, sir.” 

As he sat back against the raised top, Roderic closed 
his eyes wearily. He wished to see nothing. He wished 
to see everything in his own way, not from this crank 
and rattling vehicle. 

The pungent smell of the sea, however, made him open 
his eyes. The little harbor, where he had sailed a catboat 
for the first time under the guidance of old Billy Barker 
— that excellent nautical liar — so long ago! Still the 
sky was gray. Did it never change here? The Black- 
well shipyard in the distance was the same — and those 
new sheds — buildings — what were they ? 

“Seaplane hangars,” flung the driver over his shoulder. 



248 


MAISIE 


But Roderic did not quite understand and felt no desire 
to inquire for elucidation. The hotel! The torment of 
travel was over at last! For so long he had waited — so 
long alone! 

In the quiet precincts of the hotel the fire in the grate 
facing the desk sent a little glow through him. All the 
rest of the place, however, seemed to breathe a somber 
gloom, like a house trying to be cheerful the day after a 
funeral. This was a summer hotel that kept only a few 
rooms open for after-season traffic. The clerk, glancing 
at his name upon the register, displayed no particular 
interest. For a moment Roderic experienced that de¬ 
sire peculiar to home-comers after a long absence, — to 
bring back a touch of fame to the old place, some rumor, 
how slight soever, of deeds accomplished, of that lift 
from the mass that comes with a little cluster of renown 
about one’s name. After all, had he not roved and 
lived widely and multifariously? Had he not suffered 
and toiled and made a place, carved out a tiny princi¬ 
pality in distant waters, in strange far-off places? But 
the clerk, a stranger, merely touched upon the weather 
and mentioned the number of a room. 

Here he had returned to the Golden Age, he reflected 
somberly after he had dismissed the boy and sunk into 
a chair; he had torn his heart in two to do it; had left 
his wife, his child, his home, thousands of unbridgeable 
miles behind, and this was what he had attained to: a 
drearily comfortable room in a hibernating hotel! A 
whelming loneliness engulfed him like black night. With 
sudden resolution he shook himself free from the as¬ 
sault of dark thoughts and began pacing the small room. 
He supposed he ought to eat something but he was not 
hungry. He took up the telephone receiver and asked 
for coffee. It was long in coming and he sat staring at 
a newspaper he had picked up and had not looked at. 


THE LAND OF LOST CONTENT 


249 


Blackly, brazenly, the headlines seemed to stare back 
at him, as if defying him to fathom their meaning. 
Peace, war, armistice, troop movements, divorce, mur¬ 
der: it was all so forbiddingly obscure, so darkly mean¬ 
ingless! A mass of ink and paper, numberless words, 
but nothing to shed a single ray of light upon his peculiar 
situation that tormented and caused to writhe the spirit 
within him. Was the sheer enterprise of living the one 
and only item neglected? 

After days of mental tension and physical inactivity 
his overwrought nerves drove him suddenly forward with 
a lash. Soon he cleared the region of the hotel. He was 
in the center of the town. He was in Washington 
Street, walking swiftly, mechanically towards Revere 
Street. How well he knew those pavements! How in¬ 
finitely alien they seemed I He saw familiar old houses 
and some that were new. But his gaze fastened only 
upon faces. His heart cried out for a greeting, a glance 
of recognition. All the faces however were blank or 
preoccupied, — an uncompromising world of strangers. 
Yet this was Home! But how stupid to expect the popu¬ 
lation to come forth to greet him! He was going to his 
father’s house. 

A singular reluctance nevertheless bound his feet, kept 
him from directing them homeward. For a moment 
he stood gazing, irresolute, now at St. George’s, his 
father’s old church in Revere Street, now at the passing 
pedestrians, at the denuded trees under the black dark¬ 
ening sky, gazing with intense aimlessness, with a pre¬ 
occupied torturing indecision that enraged him. 

“This is maddening!” he muttered smiling ruefully 
at himself and abruptly he turned into Revere Street, 
walking west, past the Torrance mansion, past the Win- 
throp and the Chase houses and down Adams, turning a 
familiar corner, steering round a well-remembered iron 


250 


MAISIE 


railing into Warren Steet and, with a thickly beating 
heart, toward his father’s house, — and the garden! 

A sudden horrible sensation of uncertainty penetrated 
his vitals. What kind of a reception would he meet with? 
Strange how that aspect of his adventure had wholly 
escaped him! Too late now, however, to dwell upon 
that. He must walk up firmly. Once at the door he 
must laugh away stiffness and any vestiges of a rankling 
injury in his people, in his father, in himself. By 
George! If they did not feel the wonder of the occa¬ 
sion, the strangeness and the romance of it, — why, he 
did! No one should spoil that for him. Had he not 
suffered poignantly for its sake? It would be an odd 
coincidence if he ran into Myrtle Thornley there. 

The gate would click dully; he could almost hear it 
clicking now. He would walk briskly to the door. 
Lights were just being lit in other houses. There too 
would be the lamplight, as of old. The door would 
open. 

Hello! ” he would call out lightly, laughingly. 

Hello, father — mother — it’s I — Roderic, dropped in 
to say good evening!” Consternation — confusion — 
jubilation! The swift reellike suddenness of the picture, 
the vividness and romantic intensity, lifted his heart 
sharply and he almost ran the last few yards. 

The house! It was still dark. He was standing at 
the gateway with both hands upon the gate, unable to 
move forward. The house was dark,— dark and terribly 
forbidding. All the world seemed swathed in a pall of 
darkness. Something strange about that house! 

The very hedge, so long in his memory as trimly 
clipped, squared and even, as though poured in a mold, 
— it was ragged now, a wretched affair, grown wild 
with neglect. 

The lawn also — the bed of velvety lawn in front, two 


THE LAND OF LOST CONTENT 


251 


squares divided by the gravel pathway — how unkempt 
it looked and how dismally rustling with the dead leaves 
heaped by previous winds! 

Desolation! Why? With trembling hands he opened 
the gate at last, oblivious now of the sound of its peculiar 
creaking, and stood on the single doorstep, on the stoop. 
The bronze knocker was tarnished to blackness. One 
of the three panes in the fanlight was broken and one 
was cracked. 

Gone! ” he said to himself. ‘‘Gone — somewhere 
— deserted! ” 

An immense wave of feeling, of irreparable loss, of 
devastating irremediable frustration, on a sudden smote 
him. He seemed to stagger as under the force of a blow. 
Oddly enough, he had no forebodings of calamity to 
the inhabitants. But the bitter injury of the dismal pic¬ 
ture ! Wildly he hammered at the knocker, as a drown¬ 
ing man clutches at something. The sounds reverberated 
with a sickening hollowness through all his fibers. Sud¬ 
denly a dark creature flew out of the broken fanlight with 
a whirr over his head. A bat! he thought, and his heart 
was beating crazily against his ribs. 

With abrupt violence he flung away from the door to 
the right, to the flagged pathway that led to the rear, 
to the garden. 

Dark lilac bushes that fringed the path brushed their 
remaining dry leaves against him. He touched them all 
as he passed unsteadily by them, in a mysterious ritual 
that came back to him from boyhood. He had always 
done that. There was no reason. He felt like clutching 
their withered leaves to his aching desolated heart. 

He stood at the entrance to the garden! A dimness of 
the eyes blinded him for an instant as he stood staring, 
unseeing. Then his gaze traveled slowly, through the 
chill anemic light remaining, to the spot that had so 


252 


MAISIE 


strangely, unaccountably figured in his dreams. The 
concrete reality on a sudden was searing his eyeballs, his 
very heart. 

What he saw was an oblong of rank, chaotic growth, 
a rnass of tangled weeds: blackened desolation! — That 
was the Garden! 

The beds of phlox and peony, the borders of arger- 
itum and cosmos, the dahlias, gladioli, all were merged 
and unrecognizable in a jungle of plantain, chickory, 
and milkweed, yellow broom and burdock; all the hardy 
weeds of New England seemed to have taken forcible 
possession here, to have come savagely into their own. 

A choking agony oppressed him. He wanted to cry- 
out. 

“It’s I — Roderic Whitford! Don’t you know me? 
You have lived in my dreams with a beauty and purity not 
of this earth. How could you — how could you turn 
like this into decay?” 

But only a muffled groan sounded in his throat. The 
old mulberry stood drooping beyond the center as of 
old, its dead browning leaves rustling faintly, dismally. 
The high wooden wall at the back of it seemed to enclose 
a cemetery. 

Near to his hand was a rosebush, one of the rosebushes 
that had been his imaged ideal when he had tried to 
cultivate his own roses on the island. He seized it 
spasmodically. Sharp thorns pierced his palm. He 
scarcely felt the pain, but his grip automatically relaxed. 
He lifted his hand to his eyes. Beads of blood stood 
out, forming larger and one or two of the thorns re¬ 
mained. As one in a dream watching something emptily, 
he drew out the thorns and watched the drops of red 
exuding in their wake. Then he took out his handker¬ 
chief and clutched it in his wounded palm. 

“ Hey, mister-they’s nobody living there! ” He 



THE LAND OF LOST CONTENT 


253 


wheeled about toward the street. A boy, whose head 
was barely showing over the bushy hedge, was giving him 
this bit of kindly information. 

‘‘ Thanks! ” he replied mechanically in a voice he had 

never heard before. “ I-1 was just looking. 

Wanted to buy the place.” 

Aw — I see! ” and the boy with disgust in his voice 
sauntered on. Then it struck Roderic that the boy might 
know something. He was human at all events; there was 
speech in him. He ran heedlessly across the rank beds 
to the hedge. But the boy was too far now to shout 
after. He turned back into the garden. 

‘‘A horrible wilderness — the old place — my gar¬ 
den ! ” His lips were moving but no sound came from 
them. 

He wanted suddenly to laugh, to roar and cry out in 
an agony of bitter laughter, to roll with it, swing his 
arms about in abandonment to irrepressible cacchination. 
But something in his throat seemed to choke all the vents 
of laughter. His eyes were hotly blinded. He put the 
crumpled handkerchief in his palm against them. It 
was wet with the exudation of helpless, gruesome inward 
laughter. 

“ I must go,” he thought and he stood stock-still. The 
street was bleakly empty. 

‘‘ I must go,” he thought again, but still he stood 
rooted. 

ril grow into one of these weeds,” passed idly 
through his mind, “ if I stand here long enough.” He 
moved finally, walked back along the flagged pathway 
and found his hand brushing against burrs on his coat. 
He sat down on the stoop to pick them off. His hand 
fell motionless. 

“ This is the house of death,” he said to himself, and 
I came back to seek here — what ? The past ? What is 



254 ? 


MAISIE 


the past ? What possessed me ? What was it drove me ? 

Ah-” his thought swerved sharply — “I must find 

them — my father — stepmother.” 

But how to find them? That ought to be easy. Pro¬ 
fessor Thornley’s house across the way. Yes, there were 
lights showing. 

As he left the gate he found himself latching it 
carefully, securely. He turned toward the Thornley 
house and as he passed the hedge he paused once again 
to look over it. The desolation of the garden struck 
him anew with a dank penetrating chill. He shuddered. 

“ So this is my dream garden,” he murmured, my 
enchanted garden! ” 



CHAPTER XXII 


HAPPY HIGHWAYS 

An irrelevant melancholy smile came to his lips as 
he crossed the street. Was old Thornley still alive, still 
teaching Latin at the high school ? 

A boy was declining a Latin noun, — causa. Groping 
in uncertain knowledge the boy invariably paused upon 
the first syllable, while mentally praying for the advent 
of the right ending, and stopped. Roderic saw the scene, 
heard the very tone. 

‘'If you want the Latin word for cow, Fll give it to 
you,” Dr. Thornley rumbled mildly. “It’s vacca — 
vacca. But this is causa.” 

A far-fetched unrelated memory; and how absurd! 
Yet it brought a strange pang of nostalgia. Then it came 
to him that it was not thoughts like this that were 
wont to fill his mind when he dashed across toward 
Myrtle’s house of an evening in the past. He paused for 
an instant and then rang the bell. 

“ Probably people named Smith or Jones now live 
here,” he reflected with dejection. His late experience 
had shattered the framework of his expectation, of the 
secret structure of illusions built up like a cathedral or a 
coral reef in the course of many years. 

An elderly woman servant came to the door. 

“ Does Doctor Thornley live here? ” he inquired. 

“ No, sir. This is Mr. Robinson’s house.” He might 
have smiled as he later did smile at the answer. But a 
clamping tension still gripped him. 


256 


MAISIE 


“ Could you tell me where — where I might find Mr. 
Thornley? ” His throat was dry. He hung upon her 
answer with suspended pulses, his head bent forward. 
The woman stared at him gravely. 

“ Why, sir-I think-” she began, held by the 

spell of his intense expectant gaze, “-1 think I heard 

he was living with his daughter in Boston — Mrs. Cloud 
— Mrs. Henry Cloud — or in Brookline, I should say. 
I don’t know the street, but the telephone book-” 

“ I see,” he broke in explosively. “ Thank you. I’ll 
•—I’ll — and do you happen to know,”he queried 
abruptly, “where the other daughter is — Miss Myrtle ? ” 

“Miss Myrtle?-No, sir,” was the blank reply. 

She must have been moved by something she saw in his 
face however, for with sudden clemency she added: 

“ Excuse me a minute. I’ll inquire, sir.” She closed 
the door behind him and left him standing alone in the 
hallway. He looked about; he remembered that hall¬ 
way. The light was not so bright in Myrtle’s day. The 
woman returned with a constrained smile upon her lips. 

“ That’s Mrs. Godfrey, sir,” her large thin mouth 
opened wide. “She lives here in Adams Rock now — 
Mrs. Robinson says — in Mrs. Cloud’s cottage — one 
of the small cottages near the station. Anybody there’ll 
tell you — the station master — you can’t miss it,” she 
urged. 

He murmured his thanks and no doubt surprised her 
with a low bow like a foreigner. She did not know of 
the role she was playing — as the first finger post to — 
the Past. 

“ That ought to be enough for one day,” he told him¬ 
self sadly, as he left the doorway and wandered aimlessly 
away. The sense of devastation in his heart, of a desert 
emptiness, was only slightly watered by the faint trickle 







HAPPY HIGHWAYS 257 

of hope that now he would see Myrtle and she might tell 
him things. 

The endless flux of life preoccupied him: his fath¬ 
er’s home — Thornley’s — changed, dispersed, scattered! 
Only upon his own island was stability. But his dream, ‘ 
his vision that was so much more than all reality, — was 
there not a shred of it remaining? That was impossible. 
By sheer power of will he would piece it together out of 
a dissolving chaos. 

He was surprised to find himself near the station, 
staring at the cottages upon small lots with their shrub¬ 
bery and grass plots. “Mrs. Cloud’s cottage?” Yes, 
the station agent knew. It was the fourth one over there, 
brown shingled walls. Yes. He stared at it. How had 
he come here? He recalled no intention of seeking the 
place this evening. There were no lights. But in any 
case he would not go there now. With sudden decision 
he made his way back to the hotel. 

In the all but deserted dining room he had no notion 
of what he was eating. He ate bread voraciously with¬ 
out hunger and paused midway in his meal. All the 
food seemed to taste alike. He left the dining room as 
one in a hurry and returned to the emptiness of his bed¬ 
room. He smoked for a time. He paced the room. He 
sat down and rose up. The inward lash still drove and 
whipped and gave him no rest. 

“ That ought to be enough for the day,” he had told 
himself, but obviously it was not enough. The force 
that had driven him thousands of miles from the other 
end of the world, from home and love and peace, was 
driving him still. He put on a coat and hat, called for 
a taxi and gave the direction of Mrs. Godfrey’s cottage. 
There were lights now; she was at home. 

But the woman who opened the door to him inquir¬ 
ingly he did not know. She was no servant obviously. 


258 


MAISIE 


She was large, full-lipped, rouged and gave oddly the 
impression of a seed pod about to burst open. Her hair 
was certainly not Myrtle Thornley’s hair, for it was cop¬ 
per-colored and cut short. 

“ Mrs. Godfrey in? ” he murmured coldly. 

‘‘ I am Mrs. Godfrey,” was the coquettishly smiling 
reply. He dared not betray the wave of chagrin that 
swept him. His hand rested tremulously on the outside 
door knob. 

“ I am Roderic Whitford,” and he heard himself 
laughing idiotically for no reason on earth. He felt his 
face grow hot. 

“ Roderic — Whitford! ” repeated the woman in stark 
amazement. Then abruptly she seized both his hands 
and drew him into the entry. “ Roderic Whitford! ” she 
cried again with a little scream. ‘‘ Oh, how could you 

take me so!-Why didn’t you let me know ? Oh, 

dear, dear, how wonderful! Take off your coat — come 
in,” she ran on burstingly. “ This is the most marvelous 
thing that’s happened in — I don’t know how long I ” 

The warmth of the welcome — the change in the girl 
Myrtle ! He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound 
could pass his throat. 

** Come in — come in,” she urged, bustling and pulling 
at his hand. “Here are friends of mine. Miss Price — 
Mr. Gillmore — Mr. Roderic Whitford — an old pal — 
an old sweetheart of mine, I may say ” — and she 
giggled inanely — “ from the year one — when we were 
both babies! ” 

Myrtle’s imbecile giggling, her absurd flood of words 
meant to be humorous, aroused no answering humor in 
him. The feeling of ruin and devastation that smote 
him in the garden was with him still as he shook hands 
mechanically with the thin-cheeked young woman named 
Price, smiling into his eyes, and the purplish heavy man 



HAPPY HIGHWAYS 259 

named Gillmore, whose grin brought forward a bluish 
jaw. 

“ Come from the other end of the world,’’ rattled 
Myrtle like a chorus. “ And how long have you been 
here, Roderic?” 

“ Arrived to-day.” 

“ And found me right away — under my alias and 
all? That was sweet of you — wasn’t it, Gertie?” she 
appealed to the thin-cheeked one whose smile, fixed per¬ 
manently, now took on a malicious cast. 

I should think so! ” she snapped with a vigorous nod. 
“ Have a cigarette for that! ” and she held out her case. 
He took a cigarette. 

“Wait a minute — wait — a — minute!” Gillmore 
held out a pudgy hand with heavy play of eyebrows. 
“ We thought it might be strangers, Mr. Whitford — 

but seeing it’s you-” and he moved his chair aside, 

bent lumberingly down and brought forth a lacquer tray 
with glasses, ice and a bottle of whisky. 

“ Let’s drink to it I ” he boomed with grotesque cere¬ 
moniousness. “Another glass, Myrtle?” 

“ Do get it, Gertie,” bubbled Myrtle. “I can’t leave 
my guest now I’ve got him.” 

“ I’ll say you can’t! ” snapped Gertie. 

“ You can’t imagine, Roderic, how often I’ve thought 
of you,” purred Myrtle nauseatingly. “ You were such 
a sweet boy! ” 

“And what’s the matter with the man?” demanded 
Gertie boldly, before turning toward the pantry. Rod¬ 
eric experienced a shadowy desire to strangle both of 
them. But it didn’t matter; nothing mattered, only the 
sense of irreparable ruin! 

The extra glass was brought. They drank. They 
laughed around him and drank again. They chattered 
of the war, of the hoped-for impending armistice, of 



260 


MAISIE 


money, of the wave of prosperity that must sweep in 
like a tide, and again of the money that would be made. 
He scarcely heard them. There was a tumult in his 
brain. “Home! This is Home,” he thought. There 
was a feeling as of death in his heart. 

He lost the thread of the talk. What a fool they 
thought him, their eyes were saying. He felt himself 
wrapped in clouds of darkness. 

“ Oh, no I ” he suddenly awakened to hear in Myrtle’s 
affected mouthing. “ No — Gertie. ■ I think vice is 
beautiful.” 

“You ought to know!” flashed Gertie with a shrill 
laugh, looking at both men. 

“Don’t you think vice is really beautiful, Roderic?” 
Myrtle turned to him argumentatively. 

“Beautiful?” he repeated absently. “I don’t think 
I caught what went before. But — beautiful? No — I 
should hardly say that — not the way I saw it — down 
there in the islands.” 

The purple Gillmore winked at him knowingly. 

This must be enlightened conversation, Roderic told 
himself. Clouds of chill fog seemed to roll over him! 
These people too, seemed to be groping after something, 
something of freedom from the somber restraints that 
environed them; something they called life. 

At last Gillmore and Miss Price announced their in¬ 
tention of leaving. Myrtle smiled to them significantly, 
as if explaining why she did not detain them. They 
went; they were actually gone. The air seemed less 
murky. 

“ Now,” he began abruptly, without sitting down, 
“ won’t you tell me what has happened to my people — 
my father? ” 

“ Oh, dear,” murmured Myrtle, with a look of recoil 
in her eyes. “ Don’t you know yet ? ” 


HAPPY HIGHWAYS 


261 


“ No — Pve only just seen the place — the house — 
the garden. It seems a ruin.” 

“ Didn’t you hear from Mr. Robinson ? ” he shook 
his head. Her information, thereupon imparted with 
the type of solicitude that pawed his lapels and hands, to 
the effect that his stepmother had died in April of that 
year and his father six weeks later in June, left him com¬ 
paratively unmoved. He felt as though previous in¬ 
tuitive knowledge were merely being confirmed. He 
felt conscious only of a sense of shrinking from Myrtle’s 
hand as it roved restlessly over his arm. Myrtle was 
being kind to him, yet he could not endure her touch. 
As if stirred by emotion he moved away from her. 

She approached him again, however, drew him to a 
chair and poured out more whisky for him. 

“ I wasn’t here then,” she added to her narrative, “ but 
father came up. He told me. I’m sure he told me that 
Mr. Robinson had cabled and written you.” 

“I never heard,” he shook his head. “ But why did 
they let the place — the garden — grow wild like that ? ” 

“ The garden-” she repeated with a pucker of 

perplexity. Do you mind — does it matter so much 
to you ? ” 

He nodded slowly. She fell silent for an instant, her 
hand to her chin, lost in reverie. Then suddenly she 
bounded heavily toward him. 

“ Oh, I see — now! ” she cried with flashing sprightli¬ 
ness. “ I understand now. It’s because we were sweet¬ 
hearts in that garden — the last time we saw each other 
there! Oh, Roderic, how dear of you! ” And she 
seized his hands. “If you only knew how often I hated 
myself for sending you away! I know how much you 
cared. But I was so foolish and wilful — only a child^ 
you know. And how I suffered! ” She moved her chair 
close to his. 



262 


MAISIE 


“My marriage to John Godfrey—I won’t talk of 
that. Then Chicago — New York — I divorced him in 
the Village — he was an advertising man — he’s been 
everything, even an actor — and the alimony has been so 

uncertain! — I’m trying interior decorating now-” 

The thread of her speech was lost to him as she rambled 
on incoherently. The pulses throbbing in his brain were 
repeating, “ Ruin — painted ruin — ruin everywhere.” 

This was of the past, the Golden Age, the dream that 
had drawn him; the longing uppermost in his heart was 
for flight, precipitate flight. Madly he wanted to run, 
to fly, to — emptiness. Emptiness seemed on a sudden 
infinitely seductive. 

“ I’ll tell you what you do, Roderic,” her somewhat 
hoarse voice broke in again. “You see Mr. Robinson to¬ 
morrow in Boston — his office is in State Street — and 
then come and have dinner quietly with me here. We’ll 
have a sweet quiet time, only ourselves. And then we 
can tell each other everything. Oh, dear,” she puckered 
her forehead suddenly. “I meant to ask you; you are 
married, of course?” 

“ Married,” he repeated as in a dream. “ Oh, yes — 
yes, of course.” 

“ Is she — very lovely? ” 

“ She — she is — oh ”-He could not speak of Al- 

lene to Myrtle. It was a physical and moral impossibility. 
His heart was sharply clamped as in iron. 

“A — was she born there — or what?” He under¬ 
stood. She meant was Allene a native woman. He 
would not enlighten her. 

“ Oh, yes — yes,” he uttered as from lips of marble. 
“ She was born in Honolulu.” 

“ I see,” said Myrtle significantly. “ Then you will 
come, won’t you — about seven ? ” 

“ I’ll do my best,” he answered mechanically and rose. 




HAPPY HIGHWAYS 263 

On a sudden the woman threw a massive arm about his 
neck and kissed him loudly upon the cheek. 

“ Old friends like ourselves,” she babbled with a rau¬ 
cous, cawing laugh. “ It’s not the first time! ” 

He was conscious only of a mad desire for escape. 
The open air felt like a restorative after a partial suffo¬ 
cation. He crossed the road unaware of what he trod 
on, and once away from the main thoroughfares he ran 
headlong, madly, in the direction of the harbor. Sen¬ 
sations of violent antipathy, of bereavement, of triumph 
mingled in a wild turmoil within him as he ran. He ran 
past a row of fishermen’s cottages where he remembered 
going in the past to apprise Mrs. Mulcahy, his step¬ 
mother’s laundress, that there was work waiting for her. 
Was she still alive? She was a large Irish woman with 
a delectable brogue, radiating vitality. Was she too 
now a ruin he wondered? 

He passed through a desert of closed-up summer 
houses, a fugitive soul fleeing through an empty world. 
Only when the damp smell of the sea came pungent with 
the hissing air through his nostrils did he slacken his 
pace. He breathed deep of that ancient aroma of the 
sea that alone seemed to carry the promise of freedom, of 
hope, of life. 

Where was he? He looked about him through the 
darkness in a roving bewilderment. This must be Nes¬ 
tor’s point. He felt the cold breeze on his face from 
the harbor. At the water’s edge he stumbled about for a 
time over rocks and weeds and sank down finally upon 
a boulder lapped by the friendly waves. A dash of 
spray came against his face and the taste of salt upon 
his lips. The water — the blessed ocean — that seemed 
to bring the rumor of other worlds, of another life, of 
infinite possibilities of happiness, fecundity and beauty, 
far removed from the desert of his past! 


264 


MAISIE 


How long he remained there he could not have told. 
He found his fingers pressing against his beating heart. 
There was a burning sense of pain there, a smoldering 
flame; yet he fomented it like a delight. Before his eyes, 
too, there was a hot glow. In a radiance like a burst of 
tropic sunlight, he saw on a sudden his distant home 
that he had conquered in those far-off seas, under those 
infinitely remote yet infinitely friendly stars. The smell 
of the beach was acutely present to him, the sweet aroma 
of copra, the delicate scent of tiare and frangipani. Un¬ 
der a dazzling prodigality of sunshine he saw the island, 
his garden, a faery expanse of color and verdure, every 
sprig and blossom ineffably dear to him — a wealth of 
fecundity, freshness, growth — a paradise! 

In midst of all the glow and brilliance, Allene stood out 
to him; Allene, the incarnation of love and life, infinitely 
tender, smiling pensively, with eyes of unquenchable 
love. So warm and incandescent was the picture that 
he put forth his arms; and he moaned in an agony of 
suffering when they encountered emptiness, the driving 
mist. 

A wave of hot shame swept him like a withering blast. 
He had left everything — he had left Allene— for what? 
At the call of the most egregious and vicious of all de¬ 
ceptions : the call of a dead romanticism, the call of the. 
past! From the midst of ashes and chaos he seemed to 
be pitifully yearning, like one self-condemned to exile 
from joy and happiness irrevocably lost to him. 

“ I know now what I came to seek,” he muttered in 
an agony of desolate misery. “ Now I understand.” 
The glow that had faded into his own present wretched¬ 
ness was the Burning Bush of his peculiar revelation. 
The agony of knowledge, of clear vision at last, filled 
him with a weight of overwhelming humility and bitter¬ 
ness. Where was the richness of the world he had pic- 


HAPPY HIGHWAYS 


265 


tured through the years of nostalgia? Where was the 
fulness, the joy and the beauty of life? 

All, all of it lay for him upon that distant island he 
had made his own by toil and love. 

He leaped up suddenly. A tremor as of fever in his 
bones shook him. To return; to hold Allene to his 
heart again and Maisie; to walk in those paths ever 
more; to work and to laugh, — a fierce desire for all 
those beloved objects gripped him. He must leave at 
once all that to him appeared small and sordid; cut him¬ 
self from it as with a knife. 

With febrile steps he groped his way through the 
bleak darkened streets toward the hotel to await to¬ 
morrow. With certain clarity he knew now whence 
blew the air that killed and where lay the land of lost 
content. 

Plain enough he saw it shining now. But should he 
ever come there again ? 

As he walked with long swift strides, he was not pre¬ 
cisely thinking, but his mind was in a chaotic turmoil 
like the lashing of angry waves on a barren shore. 

Why was he here at all? What was the essence of the 
lure? Something nauseating about that experience at 
Myrtle Thornley’s cottage. How clean the summery tide 
of his own life with Allene and Maisie on his matchless 
island! How dark it was here and dead! And this was 
civilization. Every man must make his own civilization. 
At least in his soul. That was it. The souls here were 
dead. Corpses all, putrid with stocks, repressions, trivial¬ 
ities, money-making. Vice, she had said, was beautiful. 
What did she mean? What could they mean when they 
were all dead — dead? Not even a policeman to guard 
their graves. Cast away! They were the castaways, not 
he. He had made a little world, — a bright sunny 
dazzling little world. All the world ought to be brilliant, 


266 


MAISIE 


happy. But these people had murky minds, murky souls 

— dead! 

A dark angry mass of hostility, sullen, resentful, 
violent, was stirring, throbbing, rising in his chest, in his 
gorge against all the circumstances, yearnings, impulses 
that had brought him to his present pass. What had 
lured him? What was it that had snared and drawn him 
as with cables from all that was real and serene in his 
soul — to this ? But that had been real too, — that pull¬ 
ing and drawing. Temptation — the temptation in the 
wilderness. To see whether his spirit was strong enough 
to return to light. The temptation — that nameless past 

— the strange complex of emotions clustered about and 
embodied in the old deserted house and ruined garden 

He was surprised to discover that he was walking not 
in the direction of the hotel, but toward Warren Street, 
toward that same ineluctable ruin. Would he, could he 
never rid himself of its influence, of its pull upon him? 
He asked himself that question now with bitter hatred. 

A hoarse, harsh call like some savage cry seemed to 
reverberate through him, through all his blood. His face 
grew tense, rapt. Deathly stillness all about him. But 
in that dead silence the sensation of a hoarse savage shout 
within made all his muscles tremble. 

He was approaching the house. 

If only he could crush it all together, roof and walls, 
like an eggshell. If only he could tear them up by the 
roots — house and trees and garden — where his life had 
been so repressed, where the light had been crushed out 
of his young soul, where he had narrowly missed becom¬ 
ing as one of these corpselike sleepers in the neighboring 
houses. If he were a giant or Titan and could destroy! 

“If thine eye offend thee,” he muttered to himself, and 
this was the first sound that had escaped his lips since he 


HAPPY HIGHWAYS 


267 


had left Myrtle Thornley. The black mass of the house 
was before him. He paused in its gloomy darkness at 
the gate. The intense silence made the pulses thunder in 
his ears. If only — he felt rather than thought — if only 
he could blot out with a gesture that somber ruin that 
had made such havoc of his happy life by pulling it out 
of its steady course, pulling it to pieces. 

Softly, mechanically, almost unconscious of what he 
was doing, yet with a strange primitive alertness, he lifted 
the latch and entered the gate. With sure, almost som¬ 
nambulistic steps he walked along the path past the lilac 
bushes to the rear of the house into the garden. There 
he paused, gazing about him with instinctive watchfulness 
into the heavy darkness. Clouds obscured the stars. A 
chill breeze fanned his face. Dead, empty silence. 

Suddenly, like an automaton, he stooped down and 
gropingly gathered an armful of dead leaves as a reaper 
gathers a sheaf to his breast. They fell rustling all about 
him, but enough remained in his embrace. With un¬ 
faltering sureness he carried them toward the house and 
let them fall, amid the stalks of dead hollyhocks, against 
the frame wall of the one-storied kitchen that jutted out 
into the garden. 

‘‘That’s it — the one thing!” he exclaimed inwardly, 
as though he had just made a great discovery. With a 
semiconscious Eureka! air he put his hand to his fore¬ 
head. It was cold and wet with perspiration. 

Abruptly he turned and began to gather more leaves, 
dead stalks of flowers and bits of twigs, piling them all 
against the house. He was hurrying now with a con¬ 
centrated hypnotized eagerness as on some business that 
could not wait. The breeze was blowing from the back 
against the house, toward the street. He thought, “ That 
is good.” A jet of nameless exultation leaped up in his 
heart, in his brain. Yes, that was good, — the only way. 


268 


MAISIE 


Then swiftly he drew a match from his pocket, lighted 
it, cupped it in his hands and briskly applied it to the 
mound of leaves and stalks. 

The leaves began to smolder gently, then to crackle 
under the steady insistent fanning of the breeze. He 
straightened from his stooping posture. So that’s done, 
he thought, and a deep sigh rose from his breast. He 
felt like a surgical patient emerging from an anesthetic. 
With the sense of exultation still heady in his pulses he 
went gliding out of the gate and walked on without 
pressure or weight, toward the hotel. He had the sen¬ 
sation of something important accomplished, a structure 
finished, the last act of his luring romanticism completed. 

On a sudden he was conscious of the breath of the sea. 
He paused to inhale deep draughts of it. A slight reeling 
effect as of vertigo supervened, and then his brain cleared 
and thought came again jetting into his brain, throbbing 
as something that had been checked and is suddenly 
released. 

What had he done? It was the only thing. Allene 
would have wished him to do it. If thine eye offend thee 
— But it was done; no more thought. No- 

He checked it instantly. He turned toward the hotel, 
walked up the broad wooden steps and the old colored 
doorman let him in. The screech of a siren — the clangor 
of far-off gongs just as he was crossing the threshold — 
the dead stillness was rent as with pain. The negro 
mumbled something about “ fire ” and Roderic stepped 
back on to the veranda, listening intently. The negro, 
following him, went on chattering, chuckling, but Roderic 
barely heard him. Suddenly he descended the steps and 
strode briskly off toward the town. 

The screech of the engines, the clangor of bells, drew 
nearer. Automatically his steps quickened. Other men 
were now hurrying, singly or by twos and threes, toward 



HAPPY HIGHWAYS 


269 


Washington and Warren Streets. It was a certainty 
now. Yes, it was his house that was burning. If that 
policeman visible now only knew. If only nothing else 
was touched—just his own — his incubus. He turned 
the corner and saw plainly now the column of red smoke 
standing obliquely upward, shot through with volleys 
of glowing sparks. Something seemed to drop abruptly 
in his breast with a strangely lightening effect. He began 
to run, steering round into Warren Street. Both pave¬ 
ments were thinly crowded with people almost to the very 
engine, which was pumping violently. 

His house — it was a mass of flames — flames dancing 
from clapboards and shingles, flames pouring out of the 
now mysterious sockets of the windows, waning and 
brightening as the two streams of water, with the magical 
brilliance of illuminated fountains, kept playing on the 
house. How fantastically beautiful it was! The most 
beautiful thing he had yet seen in this somber joyless 
civilization to which he had returned. He thought, “ My 
house — my father’s house. I was born here. There 
was no happiness in it. Had my father ever been happy 
here — even at first? No, I never saw him happy. I 
was never happy here. But I can be happy now.” 

An exultant relief, an ethereal lightness filled his 
bosom. An inner warmth, almost as hot as these flames, 
permeated him. This mass of wood and trappings was 
turning into a heap of rubbish, ashes, — nothing. That 
was all it was fit for. Yet how it had pulled and drawn 
him, stretched the cords of his heart to the breaking 
point. But he was free of it at last! Free! 

He was standing a little away from the crowd, some¬ 
what aloof, against a stone fence. How these people 
loved to fence themselves in, to exclude others like them¬ 
selves. Windows were open in upper stories. Dis¬ 
heveled masculine heads, with sleep-swollen faces and 


270 


MAISIE 


capped feminine heads were thrusting out. ‘‘ Under con¬ 
trol,” he heard vaguely. He had felt no compunction 
on this subject, but the words brought him an added 
relief. Under control. No harm to any one else. That 
was good. Only the burning of dead wood. He felt 
himself on a sudden detached and freed from the dead 
hand of the past; this clinging to dead material things 
seemed like a gigantic curse under which all this world 
of so-called civilization labored. 

“ It is only the intellectual and spiritual best of the 
past,” a voice within him seemed to say, “ that is worth 
preserving. Instead of that mankind seems to cling to a 
lot of foolish things, — ghosts, rubbish, lumber. How 
the world could march if only it could free itself from 
those impediments! ” 

Overhead the clouds had broken and far beyond them a 
solitary star was shining. 

His dark night was ended. He was experiencing light 
and freedom. The roof and portions of the walls fell 
with a dull crash and a pyrotechnic display of flames and 
sparks. The streams of water went on idly playing on 
the lurid mass. “ Under control! ” The phrase reached 
him as from an immense distance. 

This was a strange time, surely, for him to experience 
a sudden expanding love for all created and uncreated 
things. But that was what he felt: a sharp change, as if 
mountains had rolled from him; an abrupt flooding of all 
his inner being; an outgoing love to all nature, to all 
humanity, to all those dwellers in these dark, regular 
streets, to all living things everywhere who wander and 
err and suffer in the great darkness of an encompassing 
night. He was at one with all life. 

He stirred and began to move away. 

“Allene!” He murmured to himself. Something 


HAPPY HIGHWAYS 


271 


else was pulling him now with a strength trebly greater 
than all this had ever pulled. 

At the North Station some hours later he was aston¬ 
ished to find himself staggering under the weight of both 
his portmanteaus, all his luggage. A frenzy of delirious 
chaos seemed to surge about him and some one shouted in 
his ear that the armstice had been signed. 

“ The armistice! The armistice! Oh, yes! ” 

He stood dumb and staring for an instant. And then 
a vast heave of joy on a sudden filled him, permeated him 
and flooded every atom of his body and choked his soul 
with an overwhelming surge of exaltation. The world 
was aglow, mad like himself with release, freedom. The 
shouts, the blare of horns, the laughter in which he was 
caught up, seemed the inadequate expression of his in¬ 
ward joy. He uttered a sudden loud shout, but nobody 
heeded him. 

Louder, louder and more violent must be the delirium. 
He wanted to keep shouting to them all, to cry out, to 
urge them on, — men, women, boys. What was wrong 
with them? Did they not know how to rejoice? Nothing 
could stop him now. He waved his arms in the crowd 
and threw up his hat into the air. They were all cele¬ 
brating his victory, his peculiar barrier that had burned 
away. Very well. He would celebrate theirs. Hurrah! 

His portmanteaus, — he could not walk with them. 
He found himself swept toward a taxicab discharging a 
fare. Others were clamoring for it. 

“ A fortune if you take me to the Parker House! ” he 
cried. 

“ A fortune! A fortune! ” others madly, laughingly 
cried, some with tears streaming from their eyes. 

Get in, sir,” laughed the driver. “ You said it first.” 

A happy land this, but what a tremendous share of it 


272 


MAISIE 


was his inner secret happiness. He drove away with the 
air of a victor, as though he had won the war. 

There were no rooms at the Parker House. He could 
scarcely get to the desk and scarcely away from it. He 
left his bags in the cloak-room and shouldered his way 
once again into the throng outside. 

He crept, he walked, he was jostled and elbowed in a 
mad tumult of noisy gladness until a wave of jubilation 
finally swept him to the door of Robinson’s office in State 
Street. 

With the exception of Mr. Robinson himself not a soul 
was there. All were celebrating the armistice in the 
throngs below. Mr. Robinson talked with solemnity to 
him for a moment. 

“ But didn’t you even get my cable ? ” he queried. 

“ No. Thank God, I live where no cables run.” 

The lawyer looked surprised at such callousness, but 
put it down, no doubt, to the general fury of jubilation 
in the air. 

‘‘Of course I could have sold the place over and 
over,” declared Robinson. “ But your father died intes¬ 
tate and you are the only heir. Had to wait until we 
found you.” 

“ Sell it, sell it! ” cried Roderic, with a sudden ex¬ 
plosion of energy. “ Give it away! ” 

The lawyer looked at him quizzically. He had seen 
much of human nature but this example of it was puzzling 
to him. 

“Unfortunately it burned down last night — burned 
to the ground. Mysterious — possibly sparks on the dead 
leaves. You are well to do, I take it,” he queried politely; 
“a man of fortune?” ^ 

“ I have all that I need — all that anybody needs — or 
I did have before I left home.” 

“ Well, well,” said the lawyer blandly, “ I should be 


HAPPY HIGHWAYS 


273 


a poor administrator if I hadn’t kept it insured. But 
tell me,” he continued, “ how is it that you came at all, 
seeing you did not hear from me ? ” 

Roderic felt a hot flush creep over his face and hesi¬ 
tated. Yet, feeling oddly as though he were in the con¬ 
fessional, he felt he must say something. 

“ The — the call,” he began. 

“ Ah — I see exactly,” the lawyer caught him up. 
But happily that is now of the past.” 

An immense relief surged through Roderic. Yet he 
felt he could not leave it at that. 

The call of the past,” he blurted out, “ and-” 

“ I understand you, Mr. Whitford,” broke in the law¬ 
yer, “ but the important thing now is the future.” And 
he branched off into the usual prophecy of prosperity of 
which he spoke with the solemnity of an invocation. 

“ Let me make a suggestion,” he finally digressed to 
the business in hand. “ Your father’s church, of which 
I am a vestryman,” and his thin lips set in a hard com¬ 
placency, “ needs money. How would you like to give the 
place or the proceeds of it to the church? ” 

“ Splendid idea! ” cried Roderic with enthusiasm. 
“ Never thought of that.” 

“ That is excellent — excellent — does you credit — 

Mr. — ah — Whitford. I have some forms here-” 

And he drew out papers from a drawer and proceeded to 
fill them rapidly. Roderic gazed out of the window for 
a space. “ Will you sign here? ” finally spoke the lawyer. 
“ Certainly — anything you say, Mr. Robinson.” 

“ Peace is a wonderful stimulant,” suavely smiled the 

lawyer. “ I’m sure business will feel it-” 

“ Nothing like it,” laughed Roderic. “ I have never 
known the meaning of peace until now.” 

Ah — we never know our blessings,” observed the 





274 


MAISIE 


vestryman sanctimoniously. And he nodded with empha¬ 
sis. 

After he had signed, the lawyer gave him a bundle of 
his father’s private papers and also invited him to dinner. 

Roderic declined the invitation on the plea of an en¬ 
gagement. 

“ Where are you staying, Mr. Whitford? ” 

“ In the coat room of the Parker House, so far.” 
They both laughed. 

“ Come and stay with me at Adams Rock.” 

Roderic thanked him and told him he meant to leave 
by midnight. 

“ I fancy you must be a man of great affairs,” re¬ 
marked Robinson. 

“ The greatest in the world,” Roderic answered ab¬ 
stractedly, and it was very certain the lawyer thought 
him slightly mad. 

I’ll have these documents witnessed when the cele¬ 
brants come back,” he observed irrelevantly. 

They shook hands. 

“Now,” said Roderic, with a vast inundation of yearn¬ 
ing happiness within him, “ I must look up a train for 
home.” * 

“ You speak as though you were going to Adams Rock 
or Salem,” observed the lawyer. 

“ If I could only get there as quickly! ” was the answer, 
and Robinson on a sudden gazed at him spellbound. 
He must have seen something in the face and in the eyes 
of his visitor to rivet his attention so sharply. 

“ I take it you’re not married long? ” he commented 
suavely. 

“ No,” laughed Roderic, with a sound like a sob in 
his throat, “ only since — yesterday.” 

And he left before the lawyer could challenge his 
sanity. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE LOOMING DISTANCE 

Five weeks later — weeks of intolerable nostalgia and 
yearning — and Roderic was again waiting for land¬ 
fall with the aching heart of an exile about to be restored 
to his home. Once again the delicious perfume came 
floating to the nostrils, mingled with the very breath 
of life and brought, this time, a moisture to his eyes. 
The distant breakers on the barrier came softly thunder¬ 
ing to his ears like salvos of triumph. And once again 
the island lifting from the sparkling sea, a mass 
of verdure from the depths of blue, towering to a peak 
beneath the clouds, brought him that illusion of a gigantic 
flower hanging chalice downward from a laughing sky. 
The glistening verdure, the fecundity, the color and pro¬ 
fusion of tropic soil! An exquisite pain seemed to run 
through all his flesh like a tight-strung current of fire. 

A blue lagoon, a dazzling sun, the coral mole with half 
a hundred small ships clustering about it and the friendly 
patient earth was once again welcoming the wanderer. 

The first shock to his joy as he stepped upon the quay 
was a sudden realization of the immense hostile distance 
that still separated him from home, from Allene. And 
that feeling fell round him suddenly like a black cave, 
shutting out nearly all the joy of his return. Almost the 
first person he encountered on the quay was Langley, the 
man with whom he had traded schooners. 

Had he taken an unfair advantage of Langley in that 


276 


MAISIE 


trade ? The sureness with which a questionable act turns 
up ghostlike at the wrong time shot swiftly into his mind 
as an addition to the store of his experience. But his 
pulses were athrob with unbearable excitement. 

Among the crowd of staring, chattering, moving 
jostling men, women, children, dogs — white men, brown 
men, women of all shades and colors — the red face of 
Langley, heavy and pendulous with a pipe in his yellow 
teeth, the thick lower lip falling slackly away, stood out 
with a revolting attraction. 

A smoldering light leaped into Langley’s dull eyes as 
Roderic approached him. 

“ Hello, Langley! ” Roderic greeted him. He had to 
greet some one, though his gorge rose at the dearth of 
friendly faces. Langley nodded without speaking and 
gave a jerk to the obscene briar pipe between his unspeak¬ 
able teeth. 

Your boat here? ” Roderic demanded excitedly, auto¬ 
matically. 

Again Langley gave a brief nod. He had the bloated 
careworn appearance of one recovering from a debauch. 

Yours here? ” he asked briefly. 

“ No, she is not — so far as I can see. I looked all 
along the mole as we came in.” Roderic was merely talk¬ 
ing. He had had no real expectation of finding his 
schooner at Papeete. 

“ Thought maybe you wanted to trade back,” Langley 
grinned dully. 

“ Why? Don’t you like yours? ” 

“ Oh, ay-” muttered Langley heavily. 

“ Well, then — I like mine,” laughed Roderic nerv¬ 
ously. Why should I want to trade back? ” To come 
home and meet Langley! It was somewhat nauseating. 

An evil glint came into the trader’s eye as though he 
were about to say something offensive, insulting, some- 



THE LOOMING DISTANCE 


277 


thing that would call forth anger. But the fiber of the 
man was too cowardly, for Roderic’s own glance instantly 
rose to challenge his. 

“ That was a Yankee horse trade — that trade,” finally 
brought forth Langley with his slack, pendulous grin. 

“ Oh, come, Langley — you’re drunk,” retorted Rod- 
eric and with heavy-hearted aversion turned to go. 

No — wait a minute,” Langley protested, stepping 
after him ponderously. ‘‘ I ain’t drunk now, but I was 
when I made that trade.” 

You go to the devil,” said Roderic savagely. ** I have 
no time to waste.” Then with a sudden ferocity of de¬ 
cision he paused. Like a faint bell, all at once, the sound, 
the voice of a plan announced itself through the dark¬ 
ness of the sorrow that was marring his home-coming.' 
“ Or else come and have a drink,” he added abruptly, 
decisively. 

“ I’m with you there,” responded the trader with pon¬ 
derous alacrity. ** This danged heat does dry the 
scuppers.” 

“ The scum of the earth,” Roderic thought to himself. 
“ Langley, the man no one trusted, a man with the soul 
of a pickpocket, and I am going to drink with him.” 

A corrosive bitterness arose in his heart. Why was not 
Allene here waiting for him ? Why was he here without 
Allene? Why? . . . Why everything? It was like that. 
But Langley — Langley, now that he was darkening the 
joy of his return, should be made to serve his purpose. 

It was late in December. The rainy season had set 
in and the humid air was enervating. But Roderic was 
impervious to that. The first flood of joy at his return 
was now turned to a savage eagerness that buoyed and 
carried him hotly forward. The plan involving Langley 
was forming sharply, clearly, in his harassed mind. 

“ Let’s hurry and get to the Tiare,” he said brusquely. 


278 


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“ before the crowd gets there/’ and he threw his bags 
into the nearest Ford car. 

“Hurry — mte, vite!” he called to the driver, as the 
creaking rattling vehicles started. 

Hurry! Hurry! That had been his watchword 
throughout his westward passage ever since he had left 
Boston. Hurry! All the past violence of his volition 
to leave home had seemed like the stumbling, faltering 
steps of a child, in face of the intense possession that 
now lashed him steadfastly westward. Constantly his 
eyes had kept following the circling sun and its daily 
westering brought him a climax of acute heavy nostalgia, 
a devastating homesickness such as he had never known 
before. A perpetually ceaseless driving wheel within his 
body kept urging his soul forward far in advance of 
crawling trains, of a lagging ship. 

Fatigue, discomfort were nothing. A fullness in his 
heart, in his throat, that gave him difficulty in swallowing 
his food, was the one physical sensation he was conscious 
of. He ate mechanically, he moved mechanically and 
when he slept at all, he slept mechanically with little re¬ 
sulting rest or recuperation. His previous flight in the 
opposite direction had been as the crawling of a babe 
compared to this flight of the soul. Suspense and an 
aching insatiable eagerness permeated him. Hurry! 
Hurry! Hurry! If only those elaborate conveyances 
— engines, trains, and ships — knew the meaning of 
hurry! 

At San Francisco he had begged a druggist to give him 
some sleeping draught or powder that might bring him 
rest. 

“ Must have sleep,” he explained. “ A weary voyage 
ahead of me.” 

“ Where are you going? ” had queried the druggist. 

“ To Papeete.” 


THE LOOMING DISTANCE 


279 


“ But that’s less than two weeks,” the man had retorted. 

“ Two years,” was the laconic answer; but the druggist 
had not understood. He gave him some tablets. 

And throughout those interminable days of sunshine 
and calm, of brilliant nights and cloudy, of doldrums and 
squally rain, he had driven on, inwardly far in advance 
of the steamer, the old cord that vibrated between him 
and Allene now drawing him taut as a cable. The first 
sight of the Southern Cross below the line dazzled his 
senses like a promise of Paradise, and the faint aroma 
of the island perfumes sent a riot of joys and hopes 
galloping through his blood. He could hardly bear to 
look at the emerald verdure when the island came swim¬ 
ming into view upon the caressing blue of the tranquil 
sea! And now he was at Papeete, — and he seemed 
still a million miles from home. His heart was cracking 
for a sight of home and the first face he met was 
Langley’s! 

But Langley must pay for the chance that threw him 
in the way. Langley was an accident, an instrument. 
All things and people were now instruments to be used 
forcibly, pleasantly, ruthlessly, as the case might be, to 
bring to a point and complete his greatest, most indis¬ 
pensable, most exigent undertaking: to bring him home! 
Repulsive as Langley appeared, Roderic smiled at him 
as they sat down at a table in the Tiare. 

A roaring, laughing crowd was already filling the 
hotel, and the spirit of rollicking irresponsible joy seemed 
like the dance of the May flies that live but for a day in 
a mazy round of reckless care-free abandon. 

“Cocktails! Cocktails! Martini’s,” called Roderic 
and Langley’s dull eyes brightened. The brown girls, 
with flowers in their hair and the shapeless flowing gar¬ 
ments that for all their formlessness seemed beautiful, 
were gliding about with their eternal smiles hither and 


280 


MAISIE 


thither among the tables, amid laughter and jests, flirting 
and clinking glasses, — the normal condition of existence, 
the normal atmosphere of the place. At the Tiare the 
spirit of the Armistice was perpetual. Except for Rod- 
eric and his secret longing, the hidden ineluctable pull 
of the cord from home, all were the joyous May flies, 
creatures of the day. 

Langley’s eyes grew brighter and his tongue looser 
after he had drained his copious glass. 

“ Well, old man,” he spoke with expansive thickness, 
as though his tongue were too large for his mouth, “ you 
did me on that trade, but what I say is, a bargain’s a bar¬ 
gain. Can man say fairer ’n that? ” 

‘‘ Look here,” Roderic answered, looking straight into 
the narrow pig eyes, “ where are you going from here — 
to the Paumotus ? ” 

“ Fagatau.” 

‘‘ When?” 

“ Day or two. Waiting for stuff on this steamer.” 

“ Then I’ll give you a chance to make some money.” 

“ How’s that? ” And the pig eyes smoldered. 

‘‘ Take me home. It’s not so much out of your way. 
I’ll pay you a fair passage rate.” 

“ What d’ ye mean — fair passage rate? ” 

Well, what is your price?” 

A thousand American dollars.” 

Whereat Roderic laughed boisterously. 

“ You are crazy, Langley. Better have another drink.” 
Thanks. But that’s my price,” said Langley, his 
heavy countenance darkening to a deeper purple. 

“ This stuff goes to your head too quickly,” again 
laughed Roderic. 

“ Tha’s my price,” repeated Langley with heavy stub¬ 
bornness and a glint of cunning in his eyes. 

Never mind,” said Roderic. “ Here’s how! — 


THE LOOMING DISTANCE 


281 


Don’t let’s talk about it any more. You seem to want me 
to buy your schooner.” Langley drank and wiped his 
gross lips with the back of his hand. 

“That all you think the boat worth?” he grinned 
flabbily. “ Told you — Yankee horse trade.” 

Roderic made no answer. He called the waitress and 
paid the bill. 

“ I’ve got to go,” he murmured, briskly rising. “ Got 
to find somebody who’s in his senses.” 

“ You’ll come back,” laughed Langley hoarsely. “ An’ 
remember, tha’s my price — tha’s my price.” 

Roderic reeled slightly as he threaded his way among 
the tables, but his unsteadiness was not the result of 
alcohol. That he scarcely felt at all. It was the idealist 
in him that was reeling, because the flaming dart of his 
return, an immense, a swift and beautiful streak of 
fire as it seemed now, should suddenly encounter the ugly 
dark obstacle of Langley. Could nothing remain 
rounded, complete and perfect in this world? But he was 
still sanguine with hope. 

Once out of the hotel, his face closed again like a 
mask lest his anxiety should too plainly show, lest his 
driving consuming hurry should become visible to all 
the world. From obscure motives or no motives at all 
he hurried to the cable office. There the message an¬ 
nouncing his father’s death, some six months old, was 
given to him. But nothing else. He pocketed the form 
and smiled enigmatically to himself as he turned away, — 
a smile compact of irony, pathos, bitterness. 

“It was so in life,” he reflected sadly. “Things fell 
out thus. That was how near one’s life kept abreast of 
events.” Suppose he had inquired at the cable office 
before he left; what difference would that have made? 
Who could tell? But speculation was idle. There was 
no going back. Oh, no. He had tried it and he knew. 


282 


MAISIE 


No going back, — only forward, onward, from the pres¬ 
ent into the future. Nevermore into the past. Some lines 
from his old and distant readings in Browning came 
gently floating back into his mind: 

But how carve way i’ the life that lies before 
If bent on groaning ever for the past? 

The truth of this mere poetical ejaculation, an obiter 
dictum which had fallen from Browning’s pen seemingly 
without thought, overwhelmed him on a sudden as the 
essence of all wisdom, of all philosophy, faith, — of all 
life. That was the knowledge that he, every one, the 
world he had left behind him, needed to know. Already 
in that world he had heard talk of going back to earlier 
conditions, to pre-war conditions, to pre-this and pre-that. 
As if such going back were possible, even if it were de¬ 
sirable! Henceforth his device and motto should be 
those two somewhat harsh lines of verse. All life was 
insisting, demanding, crying out for new and ever new 
conditions! 

In a brown study he found himself standing in front^ 
of the cable office. Shamefacedly he started away and 
hurried on. To McClintock’s, the copra merchant! 
Perhaps McClintock had some word, some message for 
him from Allene? It was impossible, but now he was 
taking no chances. Also McClintock might know of 
boats or traders going to the Paumotus, — traders that 
were not like that shark Langley. 

McClintock had no message of any sort for him. He 
could only tell him that the price of copra was falling, 
and the only trader known to be going in the direction of 
the Paumotus was Langley. Roderic cursed the luck 
and Langley under his breath and went out. 

All that day with unappeasing haste he scurried about 


THE LOOMING DISTANCE 


283 


the twisted streets of the little tropic town, along the 
quays and docks, on the water front, in cafes, bent on 
his consuming search for some one who might carry him 
homeward. Flowers, gayety, happiness, laughter seemed 
everywhere save in his own heart. Somberly again and 
again his harassed mind would return to Langley. How 
mad, how wickedly mad, he had been to put himself in 
this position, to leave all that was dear to him, with 
no better provision for returning! A downpour of rain 
in the afternoon, the uncompromising angry rain of the 
tropics that comes down in a flood from a sky of Biblical 
wrath, overtook him on a pavement slippery with overripe 
crushed mango fruits, drenched him in an instant to the 
bone, and drove him for shelter into a Chinese coffee 
house. 

The low room was steaming with strange odors and 
foul with stale tobacco smoke, crowded with natives, 
half-castes, sailors, — a babble of coarse laughter and 
speech in diverse tongues. Roderic stood at the door 
with his back to the room, gazing outward at the pouring 
rain, at the choleric sky, when on a sudden he beheld, 
miragelike, a bewitching picture of his home island, the 
white house with its veranda dazzling in the prodigal sun¬ 
light, the beach, a fairy land of gold and blue, and in 
the garden, a jewel of strange beauty, of enchanting 
colors, stood Allene alone, beautiful and sad, gazing re¬ 
proachfully toward him. And the perfume of the garden 
was all at once so redolent to his nostrils that he gasped 
abruptly and all but choked with a deep inhalation of 
the fetid air of the coffee house. 

“ By heaven! ” he muttered hoarsely to himself, with 
a throb of anguish in his veins, “ What devil is playing 
these cruel tricks on me ? ” 

Suddenly, as he was standing thus in amaze, he felt 
a heavy touch upon his shoulder. He turned to see the 


284 


MAISIE 


bloated face of Langley and the pig eyes somewhat 
swollen, leering into his own. 

‘‘Well, you found a boat, my fine feller?” he heard 
the thick lips utter through the din. He could scarcely 
reply, so much did the scene and the incident partake of 
the nature of an evil dream. 

“ No,” he was forced to answer finally, and he turned 
with gloomy disgust from the foul alcoholic breath. 

“ Well, y’ know my prishe,” muttered Langley thickly. 

“ Your price is crazy, unheard-of,” Roderic answered 
wearily, without looking at him. “ It’s too high even for 
a charter of your boat.” 

“Aha! — see? Told you Yankee horse trade,” 
chuckled the trader. “ Charter is good — damn good, 
by God! But tha’sh my prishe,” he repeated with 
drunken iteration. 

“ When are you sailing? ” Roderic queried tonelessly. 

“ Day aft’ to-morrow.” 

“ If I find nobody going sooner,” he murmured finally, 
with an assumption of cold indifference. “ I suppose 
I’ll have to go with you.” 

“Ye mean if you don’t find feller ye like better,” 
grinned Langley, with a demoniac drunken glare. “ Well, 
yer gooshe cooked then, m’boy. Might’sh well put your 
dunnage aboard.” 

“ By the Lord! ” thought Roderic with bitter self¬ 
searching, “ I suppose this had to be. I have not yet 
suffered enough, or paid enough. I must face my music.” 

On the Thursday following the day of his arrival at 
Papeete, the little schooner Roderic knew so well nosed 
her way out from among the varied craft along the coral 
mole and pointed to the gateway in.the reef and the open 
sea. In his heart was a somber lightness, a smoldering 
joy that gave a kind of melancholy exaltation to his 
spirit. He was going home at last, but going with 


THE LOOMING DISTANCE 


285 


Langley. Narrowly, with a constantly simmering sus¬ 
picion, he watched and scrutinized every movement and 
mien of the disreputable knavish trader into whose 
hands he had delivered himself. No one trusted Langley, 
yet he was trusting him, because come what might he 
must get to his home, to his heart’s overwhelming de¬ 
sire. Yet in that troubled heart of his he knew that he 
might be going as surely to his death. 

He had fondled a feeble hope in his breast that Langley, 
after his debauch ashore, might be too drunken during 
the first days aboard to navigate his boat and that he, 
Roderic, might slip into the charge of the schooner as 
a sort of self-appointed mate. Langley, however, had 
proved just sober enough to demand money down in 
advance and to curse his crew adequately without as¬ 
sistance from his passenger. 

“ Don’t call me your passenger,” Roderic corrected him 
once; “ call me your prisoner.” Whereat Langley laughed 
raucously with a cunning glint of his beady eyes. 

‘‘ Not bad,” he roared, slapping his leg, “ not half bad. 
My prisoner! Maroon you on some nice reef! I knew 
you had to come to me! ” And again he gloated in his 
triumph. 

‘‘ Now give me the position of your rotten atoll, and 
I’ll do my best to get you there — do my best,” he re¬ 
peated, with a savage click of his yellow teeth. Roderic 
gave him the position of his island. 

** And will you let me follow your course on the 
chart? ” he asked. 

“No, sir, not by a damn sight!” snapped Langley 
viciously. I’m skipper here. I’ll have you know. No¬ 
body can come poking his nose into my affairs.” 

Roderic made no further attempt at securing or at in¬ 
gratiating himself with Langley. Definitely now he real¬ 
ized that he had delivered himself over into the hands of 


286 


MAISIE 


his enemy. The madness of this act came acutely home 
to him as the schooner continued on her course, but it 
seemed no greater madness than much that had preceded 
it. A mood of racking despair as he envisaged his po¬ 
sition was succeeded by a somber melancholy stoicism. 
If his destiny permitted he would reach his home and see 
Allene once again, in spite of Langley. If not, — well, 
he had brought his fate upon himself and whining would 
do no good. But had he brought his fate upon himself? 
A sudden revulsion shook him. 

Why should a man be so much a puppet, a blinded 
thing compact of longings, desires, nameless and im¬ 
perious wants that carry him like flotsam on the face of 
the waters, like dust on the breast of a gale? The happy 
highways of life — there must be happy highways — 
but why were they so brief and fragmentary? Who 
trod them and who was secure in them? The poignant 
and pathetic uncertainty of existence suddenly over¬ 
whelmed him afresh like a new discovery. 

Home — the home he was aching for— was doubtless 
one of those highways. How remote, how excruciatingly 
unattainable it appeared to him now! Glamor surrounded 
it like a legend, and like a legend it seemed nine-tenths 
imaginary. 

Vividly, sharply, came back to him the pressure of 
monotony he had felt in that unattainable home, in the 
life he had made with Allene. There he had dreamed 
of freedoms and contacts and delights in the luring world 
outside. He recalled the sensation of being a prisoner of 
life — imprisoned and captive in the home he had 
fashioned — in his garden, with Allene! 

How achingly he longed for those prison bars now! 
He saw by a sudden light of intuition that the greatest as 
the least were prisoners of life. That the secret of 
freedom and happiness lay in the curbing of greeds and 


THE LOOMING DISTANCE 


287 


desires. Was he the last to learn this truth or were all 
men and nations equally blind to it? Was it too late for 
him now to profit by his discovery? The dark and the 
light of his peculiar adventure, his tiny arc of the great 
circle, the bitter and the sweet of its savor were all 
suddenly revealed and vivid to him in a strangely trans¬ 
formed juxtaposition, as though his last day upon earth 
had come. Unsleeping and vigilant though he might 
be, he realized he was in the hands of fate; and fate in 
this instance was Langley. 

He endeavored to shake himself free from these tor¬ 
menting deflections by chatting with the Kanaka crew, 
by lending a hand with their work. But the noxious 
presence of Langley made peace even in resignation 
impossible. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


THE GATEWAY AGAIN 

On the morning of the seventh day out from Papeete 
Langley came forward to him with a brow lowering as 
the heavy cloud bank to the northeast, his jowl hanging 
over the lapels of his soiled drill coat. Rodericks heart 
bounded sharply. 

“ Getting near my place, aren’t we ? ” He inquired 
casually enough, but with a fiery excitement in his breast. 

“ Look here,” growled Langley, ignoring his words 
with a peremptory jerk of the head. “ Come on aft with 
me. Want to talk to you.” 

Whatever it was, whatever treachery or baseness the 
trader was devising in that bullet-shaped skull of his, 
would now come to light. Instinctively Roderic knew 
that with the deadly certainty of intuition. But he walked 
forward lightly beside Langley, humming a tune as he 
went. Langley shot him a sidelong glance but said noth¬ 
ing until they entered the little cabin. 

“ Now by my reckoning,” began Langley, with 
ponderous gravity, ‘‘ we’ll come abreast of your island 
by noon.” 

“ Good! ” cried Roderic with feverish exultation. 
“ A snug berth you’ll find it. I’ll have my men water 
and victual you — if you need it.” 

Keep your shirt on,” interposed the trader with a 
dark gleam in his eye. “ Point is, I ain’t going into a 
hole I don’t know. I’ve got a bad barometer here and 


THE GATEWAY AGAIN 


289 


I don’t go piling up my boat on any damn reef I don’t 
know the lay of.” 

“ But I’ll take you in,” expostulated Roderic with a 
dry throat. “ I know every inch of it.” 

“ No, sir 1 ” cried Langley, with a rising temper. “ I 
don’t trust anybody. Safer before the wind for me.” 
Roderic’s heart was leaden within him. What was the 
beast driving at? 

Well, what do you intend to do? ” he queried calmly. 
“ I paid my passage — the price you extorted, didn’t I ? ” 

‘‘ You’re danged right you paid your passage,” shouted 
Langley in triumph. “ But I ain’t going to look for no 
break in any bleeding reef for anybody in places I don’t 
know.” 

“ What will you do, then? ” demanded Roderic in his 
turn. “ Out with it! ” 

This is what I’ll do,” rasped the trader with a glare 
of his bloodshot eyes. See that dinghy swinging there? 
You’ll pay a hundred and fifty dollars for her and she’s 
yours.” 

‘‘And what should I do with the dinghy? ” demanded 
Roderic, suppressing an all but irresistible desire to grip 
the brute’s throat and choke the evil life out of him. 

“ You’ll go over the side in her,” intoned the other 
in a sort of mocking singsong. “ You’ll step your little 
mast and lugsail and you’ll find your rotten hole for your¬ 
self. I’ve fooled away too much time already on this 
bloody business.” 

“ Man alive! ” cried Roderic, with a dry laugh. “If 
you want to — do that kind of thing, why go to all that 
trouble? There must be easier ways. If a storm catches 
me in that eggshell,” he thought, “ it will be plain mur¬ 
der.” But he would not give this devil the satisfaction 
of hearing him say it. 

“ That’s as may be,” roared the trader. “If you know 


290 


MAISIE 


your place so well, you won’t have any trouble. But I 
don’t go putting my head in a noose.” 

“No?” said Roderic. “The noose is waiting for 
your head somewhere.” 

“ Say another word,” exploded the other in darkling 
wrath, “ and you’ll have to swim for it. No Yankee, nor 
no other blackguard can do me twice in a horse trade or 
any other trade.” 

With the cold fury of despair in his heart Roderic 
stared at him for an instant then abruptly turned and left 
the cabin. Whatever happened he was determined to 
have no more words with that scoundrel. 

A dull fatalism crept in upon him in the wake of his 
anger. The island was nowhere yet in sight, and Langley 
might still come to think better of it, depending upon 
the quantity of alcohol he imbibed between now and 
landfall. But in any case, he thought, if it were his 
destiny to perish at the very threshold of his home, the 
home he had so madly, so cavalierly abandoned, the home 
that now shone with the ineffable brightness of life it¬ 
self, then perish he must. A faint clinging hope in his 
star came blowing like a wavering breeze through his 
heart. He felt like a man condemned to death, but 
hoping against events for a reprieve. He walked up 
and down in the waist of the ship without haste, without 
betraying by a sign or gesture the turmoil of perturba¬ 
tion within him, humming softly the tune of “ Tipper¬ 
ary.” 

The cloud bank was rolling in steadily, solidly, 
voraciously eating up the brightness of the sky, blotting 
out the sun like a vast sheet of dull-gray blotting paper. 
The whitecaps grew more insistent and numerous, like 
barking heads leaping up from the darkness of their roll¬ 
ing bed. 

Strain his eyes as he would, Roderic descried the faint 


THE GATEWAY AGAIN 


291 


shadowy blur, but infinitesimally deeper than the over¬ 
cast horizon, only after the Kanaka lookout had cried 
his landfall. 

For a moment joy leaped up in his heart, to the utter¬ 
most filament of his veins like a fountain of wine. His 
senses swam with a sudden and heavy intoxication. He 
swayed for a moment then ran to the forepeak and stood 
in the chains beside the brown Kanaka. There behind 
that film of gray veil, that resembled any other distant 
spot of land seen in like conditions, lay mysteriously hid¬ 
den happiness, beauty, his heart’s innermost desire. He 
imagined it sunlit and radiant, in despite of the clouds, 
as though apart from the universe, eternally brilliant, a 
magical spot where only light prevailed. There was 
Allene who filled his heart, and there was Margaret; there 
the home that he had conquered, the richness, the peace 
and the splendor; and there was the garden, his garden 
that he had made with his hands, incomparably, shiningly 
beautiful, surpassing Avilon or any valley of romance, 
beckoning and calling to him. He seemed on a sudden 
possessed of wings, so light was the soul within him and 
so incredibly eager. Already it had winged its way far 
in advance of him, hovering in ecstasy over the island. 
A voice like music floated toward him. Was — was that 
Allene calling him? 

On a sudden he heard a shout behind him. A Kanaka 
was carrying a small keg of water upon his shoulder to 
the dinghy and the two others were already busy at the 
falls. 

A great throb like a steam piston suddenly shot his 
heart forward against his ribs and for a moment his 
throat and chest felt choked and distended. 

He is going through with it then ? ” he murmured to 
himself, aghast, as though watching preparations that 
concerned some one else. ‘‘ Can he really do it ? ” his 


292 


MAISIE 


lips did not move but he was inwardly conscious of an 
eloquence of soliloquy that seemed to resound to the 
heavens. “ Send me to my death in sight of home — al¬ 
most within reach of Allene’s hand, of her voice, her 
eyes? Was this why I hurried home so fast — only to 
die just outside the door? No, no!” he murmured 
aloud. Only let me see them once again — for one 
hour — one minute — one second-” 

‘‘Whitford!” shouted Langley again. “Come, step 
along now. No fooling. Haven’t got the time for it.” 
The baseness and the treachery of the man then, knew 
no respite, no change. 

A sudden fortitude swept into Roderic’s blood like a 
baffling wind from an unknown quarter, crackled through 
his muscles and stiffened his backbone like a spring. 

“ One can die only once,” he thought, “ but that black¬ 
guard will hear nothing more from me. After all, it 
may be one of his jokes.” Aloud as he came aft, Roderic 
said, 

“ I’m ready, if you are.” 

Langley looked at him intently for a moment. That, 
said a wild hope in Roderic’s heart, is the point where 
this pirate will declare it’s all a joke.” 

“ Let’s see that hundred-and-fifty dollars,” finally ut¬ 
tered Langley. Calmly, in businesslike fashion, Roderic 
counted out the money. 

“ Now — get over with you.” Then it was not a joke. 
The malignant half-drunken ruffian really meant it. A 
momentary film of darkness wavered smokily before Rod¬ 
eric’s eyes and then it passed. A strange calmness fell 
upon him and a sudden clarity of vision, of clear-eyed 
peace, settled upon him, that seemed to cut off cleanly and 
closely all doubt and all fear. He felt completely master 
of himself. He looked intently for a moment into Lang¬ 
ley’s narrow eyes and smiled. 



THE GATEWAY AGAIN 


293 


The Kanakas standing about grinned lividly and their 
eyes glittered into his with awe. 

“ Good luck,” muttered one of them in Tahitian and 
Langley turned away with a heavy movement of his 
hulking shoulders. Then Roderic briskly stepped over 
the after bulwark and lowered himself by a rope into 
the dancing cockleshell below the stern. 

“ Let go! ” shouted Langley, peering downward with a 
sort of overhanging cold malignancy. It was done. 

Five minutes later, intent and amazingly alert, Roderic, 
with his tiny mast stepped and the sail drawing, was 
making for the mistily shadowy shore, which he could 
barely discern from his low position against the cloud¬ 
bank. The schooner was tacking about into the wind. 
He glanced for an instant over his shoulder and then 
checked himself with a bitter determination to look be¬ 
hind him no more. 

The first shock to his attention, as he looked up 
mechanically from his task of steering the dancing little 
craft, was the illusion that the smoky patch of the island 
seemed more distant than before. It was an illusion that 
he understood, and yet it sent a shattering current through 
his vitals like the stab of cold steel. 

If only he could see the land more clearly, so as to 
recognize it. Was Langley capable of setting him down 
near some other island not his own? Why not? If he 
were capable of this? But a sudden wave of reassurance 
swept him. Yes, this was his island. His mind strained 
to the breaking pitch, refused to envisage any danger 
or calamity more dire. It had reached its saturation 
point. 

A plop of water fell with a sound like a slap or a buffet 
into his boat and for some minutes all his energies were 
intently concentrated upon bailing it out. The water was 


294 


MAISIE 


sloshing about his feet and over the portmanteaus in the 
bottom. 

“ Might get wet,” he muttered to himself, “ the things 
for Allene and Maisie might get soaked.” 

Then on a sudden he laughed to himself. In the face 
of his position and danger, that thought and these words 
mechanically uttered to the wind appeared screamingly 
humorous. He laughed, — and found his lips stinging 
with pain where the dry skin had cracked. 

For an instant there was a lull in the wind. Neverthe¬ 
less his little sail drew steadily. There was enough wind 
for that. But with a sudden glow in the respite he pic¬ 
tured again his wife Allene; the dazzling spot that was 
home, so inimitably, so peacefully radiant, a veritable 
island of the blest; and his garden, as though that patch 
behind the house summed up and presented in a single 
parcel all his past endeavor, — the years he had lived 
and wrought upon earth. So strangely vivid appeared the 
picture, even to the shadows of an afternoon, that he 
leaped up sharply, to the danger of his crank, little vessel 
and himself, and gazed, with a new gripping pain through 
all his members, at the distant shore. 

Yes — it was plainer now. A little nearer it seemed. 

And that — that sound! Was it not a sound? Was it 
the wind and the waves? He could have sworn he had 
heard a voice — Allene’s voice — full of pity and alarm, 
made strange by suffering and alarm, crying, crying and 
calling to him: 

‘‘Roderic! — Roderic!” he heard her with his ears. 

A chill tremor of awe quivered through his flesh and 
crept like an acid through the recesses of his being. He 
eased the sail somewhat, for the wind was blowing up 
more angrily. Swiftly he glanced about him. Some 
fifty yards behind him to the right, he saw a dark triangle 
dipping and showing among the swirling waves. With a 


THE GATEWAY AGAIN 


295 


savage epithet and yet with an involuntary shudder, he 
told the shark that he had no fear of it. But all at 
once his island, his home and his wife seemed infinitely 
more remote and unattainable than they had appeared 
when he had hurried to the South Station in Boston. 

“To die within sight of home; is that possible?” his 
lips murmured as of themselves, without sound. 

“ Perfectly possible,” he answered himself harshly, 
with an eery laugh that sent a chill through him. A 
wave swept him and left him drenched with the salt water, 
and feverishly he fell to bailing again with his left hand, 
his right, like another personality, intent upon managing 
his craft and sail. 

Why, it suddenly flashed through his brain, with an 
irrelevant swiftness, should a man not be able to recog¬ 
nize his destiny, his happiness, when he is immersed and 
embosomed in it? Why must he lose and seek them 
through the gates of death? There was no answer in 
himself, no shadow of an answer. 

A sharper gust of the gathering wind suddenly sent 
his dinghy bounding forward like so much thistledown. 
Her nose dipped violently into a tall wave and half filled 
with water. He took in his sail and fell to bailing 
frantically. 

As he glanced up suddenly from a kind of befogging 
darkness he saw the island clearly now, the masses of 
the foliage, the cliffs in the distance. The deadly white 
wall of the surf upon the reef churned high and for¬ 
bidding, like a leprous moat he must not pass. His boat 
tossed on more and more violently. No! No chance on 
earth of making the break, the lagoon. He was on the 
wrong side of the island! 

A sudden sweep of rain struck the side of his face 
like whips. An angrier darkness descended upon the 


296 


MAISIE 


waters and the wind now lashed out in a violence oi lury 
that was like a cannonade. 

“Yes, death in sight of home — perfectly possible,” 
he said to himself with a faint smile, and on a sudden 
he felt a weakness in his hands and limbs. How much 
longer, he asked himself, could he battle against this 
fury, in this cockleshell with only two hands? Yet a 
strength, a force outside himself, kept pulling and draw¬ 
ing him, drawing him on like a cable. 

Involuntarily he glanced in the direction of the tri¬ 
angular fin. It was not visible now. 

“Left me?” he muttered incredulously. “No — 
hardly.” 

The thunder of the surf upon the reef was now plainly 
audible, in spite even of the raging wind. The chances 
of survival were one in a million, he told himself. 

Then a curious swiftness of mental activity seemed to 
loosen bands of steel in his brain. A dart of illumina¬ 
tion, like a lightning flash, shot through his mind. He 
threw open the nearest portmanteau, drew forth a rug and 
his clotlies, and with an uncanny precision of his hands 
and fingers rolled the clothes into the rug in a sausagelike 
shape, passing the seventy-foot line, all he had, about the 
ends and fastening the slack of the rope about the middle 
thwart. Then, with a violent efifort, he threw the roll 
overboard behind him. 

“ A sea anchor,” came from his cracking throat as if 
in triumph. Then the tremendous effort of concentra¬ 
tion seemed to leave him limp and powerless. The little 
boat swept on careening, rising to dizzy heights and 
falling suddenly into profound hollows, awash with swirl¬ 
ing water that he bailed mechanically. The lashing of the 
water keg gave way and struck his leg violently. But he 
felt no pain. He lifted the keg and threw it overboard. 

“ No use — no use at all,” he murmured faintly. 


THE GATEWAY AGAIN 


297 


The terrific white wall of foam at the reef loomed 
terrible, like a furious rampart of death raised against 
the ebbing forces of life. There death alone was strong. 
It was nearer now — appallingly near — nearer! The 
gates of death! 

The voice! He heard it on a sudden again through 
the tumult, piercing. The pity and the terror of it! 

“ Roderic! Roderic! ” It was in his ears. He opened 
his lips as if to speak but he could make no sound. 

With a sudden dash his boat shot high and forward, 
quivering in every fiber of its body, in every nerve of 
his. The roar of the surf was deafening, the white wall 
lashing, blinded him. A shock — an explosion of sound 
and tumult — a sudden sunburst of blinding light and 
he seemed to be walking peacefully, in a dazzling radiance 
in his garden. Allene and Maisie were there, approaching 
him: happiness at last! 

From a darkness dreary and endless, troubled by waver¬ 
ing shadows of a thin watery formlessness, from an in¬ 
terminable succession of wearying sounds and noises, 
dragging, nameless and continuous, Roderic awoke at last, 
but he was not certain he was awake. For over him he 
saw the face of Allene and the eyes of Allene were strain¬ 
ing into his. The arms of Allene were about him. His 
bruised inexplicably heavy head was resting on her lap. 

That was all natural enough, yet wearisomely perplex¬ 
ing and strange. He had last seen her in the sunlit gar¬ 
den coming with her swaying grace, coming toward him 
with Maisie’s hand in hers. But now — This was not the 
garden. The somber foliage was dripping, the sky was 
overcast; it was almost night. Now he lay stretched out 
and wet and aching in every limb, unable to move for 
pain and exhaustion. 


298 


MAISIE 


He endeavored to hold open his heavy drooping eyelids, 
to smile into Allene’s eyes. 

Allene’s face was tear-stained and distorted with grief! 

A sudden ringing cry pierced his ears. 

“ Roderic! — Roderic! — Speak to me! 

This was even more puzzlingly strange. 

“ What — what happened — in the garden ? ” he 
whispered. Speech was suddenly become so absurdly, so 
exhaustingly difficult. 

“ The garden? ” she queried, in a voice tremulous with 
anxiety. “ What garden ? What do you mean, dear ? 
But, oh — never mind — my darling — my love — 
you’re alive — you’re alive — thank God! ” And her 
face fell close to his. He felt her hot breath on his lips, 
as though she were bent on breathing her warm life into 
his suddenly dulled one. And she broke into a quivering 
ecstasy of passionate sobbing. So unlike Allene! 

“ You have come back to me,” she moaned again and 
again. “You have come back to me, my own!” He 
wanted to raise his arms, to comfort her. But he could 
not. 

“ Come back! ” he muttered indistinctly. Why not ? — 
he had only been — but the frost upon his wits would have 
been laughable if it were not so tragic. To think — the 
merest trifle of thought — seemed an insuperable under¬ 
taking. He lay still for a moment. Gradually he looked 
about him. The dripping foliage, broken boughs, melan¬ 
choly desolation, dusk and the thunder of the surf some¬ 
where beyond his feet. 

“ Not the garden,” he murmured finally. Then the 
scattered threads of memory began languidly, slowly to 
fall into a web, a pattern. Langley — oh, yes, that Lang¬ 
ley — the small skiffi — the storm — a terror shook his 
frame — the storm — oh, he remembered now with a sud- 




THE GATEWAY AGAIN 299 

den crowding rush of detail — the thunder of the surf 
— the white wall — the gates of death! 

“ Ah,” he breathed with a sudden vast relief, “ the same 
place — the same spot almost — where I landed first — so 
long ago — and you — oh, it is you, Allene ? ” 

“ Oh, yes, dearest, it’s I! ” Allene was trembling, laugh¬ 
ing, and crying. Her tears were streaming but her face 
was radiant. She gripped him more tightly — and the 
pain in his arms—but it didn’t matter. An abyss, a 
chaotic darkness, seemed to surround them, and he had 
the effect of struggling violently to emerge with Allene 
into light. 

“ How — did you know I was here ? ” he whispered. 

“ How did I know? ” she gasped, in a kind of choking 
triumph. “ Because, dearest, I have come here every 
day since you went away, waiting and praying and long¬ 
ing for you; hoping and calling you, Roderic.” 

Ah, that was it — the voice — her voice — he had 
heard. 

So beautiful was she as she hung protectively over him, 
so warmed was he by her tender love — and he had left 
her! — left her! — that he feared for a moment it must 
still be a part of the dream, and he closed his eyes again. 


CHAPTER XXV 


THE CIRCLE 

Black smoke was pouring from a heap of burning coco 
shells, and two native boys were feeding the flames. The 
peculiar fatty odor that came with the heavy smoke was 
acrid to the nostrils and caused the eyes to sting, even 
where Roderic stood, some distance from the burning 
mound. It brought back to him the memory of the 
time when he had burned up shells and rinds for old 
Galbraith. He turned away and smiled. Everything, it 
seemed, lay in the point of view, in the attitude of the 
mind. At that time he had felt himself a slave and was 
miserable. Now he sniffed the unpleasant aroma with 
satisfaction. He was master here and he was happy. 

He walked off toward the house and as he waved a 
hand to Allene on the veranda, the memory of his return 
to the island three years earlier, for no reason at all, now 
came back to him. That was a day of beginning life all 
afresh. 

“ It will always be the beginning with us.’^ From the 
recesses of his memory the words he had spoken to Allene 
in the cave, in the culminating episode of their love, came 
floating back to him. That day when he lay for the 
second time battered at her feet was surely a beginning. 
But every day was a beginning, — even to-day. 

Langley — the poor drunken brute! Recently, upon 
his last trip to Papeete, he had heard that Langley had 
piled up his schooner on a reef and ended his brutal be- 


THE CIRCLE 


301 


sotted existence. Yet he had felt no hostility toward 
Langley, only a sort of gratitude. For all his brutality, 
Langley had been one of the instruments that had re¬ 
stored him to his own. 

“Will you forgive me, Allene?” he had asked her. 
He dwelt lingeringly upon the scene in his memory. 

“You are back and you are alive. That is all that 
matters,” had been her reply. 

He remembered now with what astonishment he had 
looked upon the development of Allene in his absence. 
From a clinging woman she had become a chatelaine, alert 
and amazingly self-reliant. She had kept the natives 
up to their work, the coco palms bound and the taro 
patches clear. With the sickness of death in her soul, she 
had even arranged pika-nikas for the natives and kept 
them contented. 

“ We must work well, so that the master will approve,, 
when he returns,” she had kept repeating to them, at a 
time when the gnawing fear in her bosom was that he 
might never return. Her one diversion had been her 
secret peregrinations to the west beach of the island, to 
gaze out seaward, to long and to pray for her husband’s 
return. 

“ Ladies like your lady,” had philosophically observed 
Orui, in singing Allene’s praises to Roderic, “ were often 
made queens in the olden times.” 

“ They are queens even to-day,” he had answered with 
a sigh of profound humility; “ queens of men’s hearts, 
Orui.” And Orui signified that he understood. 

“ Ah, she has told you,” chuckled the garrulous old 
man, “ how she stood on the beach, when Tapena Brucee 
came back, after you left, and she would not let him 
land?” Roderic’s amazement was lost to old Orui’s 
reminiscent delight. “ How splendid she look! ” he 
squeaked hoarsely, “ big, tall, straight as a palm tree, 


302 


MAISIE 


flashing fire from her eyes. ‘ You must go at once! ’ she 
say, ^at once.’ And when he say he wanted water, the 
boys brought him water. But she never move. And all 
the time she had little pistol in pocket of her pareu-dress. 
And Brucee, he turn nose of his boat and go back in 
one hour, like whip dog. How we laugh I She have tole 
you?” 

“ No, Orui. She has never told me.” 

“ That, too,” he thought, “ I had brought upon her — 
frail little Allene. She is worth about twenty-four of 
me. And she never told me.” 

Where is Maisie? ” asked Roderic, as he came up the 
steps of the veranda. 

“ In the birdcage,” said Allene, with the look of 
triumphant happiness in the mere thought of Maisie’s ex¬ 
istence, — a look that children often surprise and some 
times take advantage of. But Maisie was too busy to 
revel in the pride of her parents. 

“ With the pickaninnies ? ” He asked. Allene nodded. 
By the pickaninnies Roderic meant the brown children of 
the island whom Maisie, with masterful decision,. had 
elected to school. In the birdcage that Roderic was wont 
to call his prison or calaboose, Maisie assembled her 
school four mornings a week, in order to convey to the 
native children the fruits of civilization from her own 
limited store. 

“ What is she teaching them, I wonder,” he speculated; 
“ the three ‘R’s’?” 

‘‘ Nothing so practical,” Allene answered with a laugh. 
‘‘ I believe it’s history to-day.” 

“ Blessed if I don’t go out and eavesdrop I ” declared 
Roderic and cautiously he stepped out into the garden. 

His delight in Maisie was an emotion so full and vivid 
that he could not speak of it even to Allene. Even to be 


THE CIRCLE 


303 


discussed with her, it was too intimate. Allene under¬ 
stood it better than he did himself. But fondly he fancied 
that he did it beneath half-tender half-humorous asides, 
under little jests at Maisie’s expense, under a generally 
laughing attitude. “ Mustn’t spoil the child,” he thought. 
Yet she, whom he always envisaged as the child, was 
fifteen now and remarkably grown and developed for 
her years. In many respects she was a young woman, 
with her mother’s eyes and her mother’s beauty. As 
“ your little sister ” he often spoke of her to Allene. 

“ Do you realize what a little fountain of energy that 
child is? ” he would suddenly demand of Allene with the 
air of a new startling discovery. 

Do I realize? ” Allene would answer. ‘‘ No! I am 
rather blind to things that concern Maisie.” Then she 
would sigh pensively and reflect that it was “ too bad 
we are so alone here — she has no companions.” 

That remark always stirred him to a disproportionate 
degree. At times he would pass it by in protesting silence. 
At others he would fairly leap from his chair and grow 
warmly argumentative. He knew what Allene was think¬ 
ing of. She was already building feminine air castles — 
marriage, possibly — for Maisie — Maisie I — of all 
girls in the world — Maisie! — a mere child. As though 
there were not time enough for notions like that. He 
could not help recoiling from the very thought. His 
Maisie! Time enough for that, he thought. Have to 
take her somewhere where there are people. But Lord, 
she is still a child. 

“ Look how happy she is ! ” he would cry out. “ Could 
you imagine any girl more contented on the face of the 
earth? It was diflferent with you and me! Yes, it was, 
Allene dear, and you know it. My home — you know 
all about that — and your poor father’s temper. I am 
not reflecting on him, mind you, dear! That’s the way 


304 


MAISIE 


the poor man was made. But Maisie — she knows I like 
her and that you are — rather foolish about her. And, 
I think, she’s rather fond of us! ” 

Whereat Allene would laugh softly: 

“ She is made just as you and I, Roderic, with like 
thoughts and the same desire for life.” 

Oh, yes, you may laugh, Allene,” he would expostu¬ 
late. “ But I know she hasn’t a thought in the world 
that is away from us. I’ll swear to that. She is too 
happy and contented — and is going to be for a good 
many years to come. Why cross bridges? — If we have 
learned one thing, you and I, it’s that the present — to¬ 
day — is the only day that counts.” But there Allene 
would not argue with him. And he would kiss her, and 
they would smile mistily into each other’s eyes, and so 
the arguments always ended. 

In the garden he walked about softly among the flower 
beds as though bent on some private errand of his own 
not even remotely connected with his daughter. But 
gradually, as though accident had brought him there, he 
was standing near the birdcage, still seemingly intent upon 
some stalks and plants. Under the cover of this employ¬ 
ment he listened cautiously. 

In the native tongue Maisie was telling the children the 
story of the Crusades. The bizarre names of Godfrey 
and Bohemond and Tancred caused slight titters among 
her audience. But they listened raptly to what followed: 

“ And some of those knights,” she went on, ‘‘ great 
and mighty chiefs, when they came to those pagan lands 
that lived in darkness, carved out principalities for them¬ 
selves, larger, much larger than this island. With their 
swords and lances — spears — they carved them out and 
they settled there among the dark people and ruled them 
and brought them light.” 


THE CIRCLE 


305 


“ Exactly like Tapena Vitti Fori! ” cried one boy in 
delighted awe. Roderic was spellbound. 

“ Yes, exactly like Tapena Vitti Fori — and like other 
white men and chiefs the world over,” Maisie continued, 
and then as though uttering one single long word in her 
recital, she added quickly in English, ‘‘ and I know you 
are listening, daddy, and laughing at me; why don’t you 
come in and do it better if you can? ” 

Roderic exploded with muffled laughter. 

“ That kid! ” he muttered to himself, in an ecstasy 
of welling affection as he walked away and laughed until 
the tears ran down his face. 

“ Do you know,” he called out, returning to the bird¬ 
cage, that this is a half-holiday?” 

“ Yes, daddy,” was the cheerful answer from within.” 

Then you better dismiss the class — don’t you 
think?” 

“Yes, dadsie — but the class is over, anyway.” In a 
moment the children came trooping out, crossed the gar¬ 
den with great care and respect and swiftly vanished on 
their own side of the island. 

The declared half-holiday was an anniversary. To the 
natives an anniversary, a picnic, a holiday, were all one, 
so long as it spelled gayety and jubilation. They could 
laugh, wreathe themselves, eat, chatter, sing, and that was 
what counted. But to Roderic this particular anniversary 
counted tremendously. It was the third of his returning 
after his bitter hegira. 

It was some time later that Roderic working in his 
garden among the rosebushes, that now seemed all at once 
to have attained prosperity, caught himself talking to 
them as might some aged gardener thrown wholly upon 
his plants and blooms for society. 

“ Better than any old Galbraith could ever produce,” 


^06 


MAISIE 


Jfie muttered. This isn’t the same garden at all — a 
•brand-new garden, by George, brand-new! ” 

On a sudden he observed his daughter Maisie watching 
him. In her white duck suit, with the shimmer in her 
hair and sparkling eyes, she might have been Allene six¬ 
teen or seventeen years earlier. And yet there was a dif¬ 
ference too. There was less repose about her. Less of 
the quiet magnetism, more of an air of restlessness, of 
wilful indomitable energy. 

She’ll think I’m crazy talking to myself,” he thought 
and flushed slightly. One’s children can embarrass one at 
times even more than strangers. 

Don’t you think I’ve a splendid garden here, Maisie?” 
he called out with loud cheerfulness, more to cover his 
confusion than to seek a criticism. 

“ Yes, daddy,” came in her clear voice, it’s lovely. 
It’s just the kind of garden I am going to have myself 
some day, only nicer still! ” 

“ Here, you young ‘ baggage ’! ” he cried, with a sort 
of uneasy delight. “ Is that playing the game? If you’ve 
any improvements to suggest come right along and throw 
them in the pool. I’ll do whatever you say, change what¬ 
ever you like — if it’s any good. Out with it — what’s 
on your mind ? ” 

Still erect and graceful, at the small distance from 
her father, she stood firmly, made no movement to ap¬ 
proach nearer and thought for a moment. 

“ That’s just it, daddy,” she finally answered with that 
charming air of spirited energy that only an old cur¬ 
mudgeon could have called impertinence. ‘‘ I can’t tell 
you, and I can’t suggest anything. For the simple reason 
that I don’t know myself yet.” 

‘^Ah!” -he laughed in fond derision of her. 

Miss General Information, you’ve said something there! 
You are a true critic. That’s the way critics are made. 



THE CIRCLE 


307 


You want something else, but don’t know what it is. By 
George, that’s good! Come here! Solemnly and coldly 
your austere parent is going to kiss you. Coldly, because 
he thought you were different — and lo! you’re like all 
the rest of all the world of offspring.” 

Swiftly she came toward him with her irresistible laugh. 

‘‘Why should I be different, dads?” she put an arm 
about his neck, rose on her toes and swiftly kissed him. 
Her caress still brought him a slight dizziness in the 
brain, a sort of loosening of the heart, of all the knots 
of his being, as in the days when she was a silken-skinned 
baby. He still recalled her first crow of delight. “ Why 
should I be different,” she repeated, “ when I have such 
an original dad? ” 

And with a burst of clear rippling laughter she leaped 
away from him before he could catch her and punish her 
in the way such audacity should be properly punished. 
In a streak of white, her slim ankles flashing, she was 
gone out of his garden, — vanished. The place, bereft 
of her, seemed suddenly overclouded, lacking something. 

“ The little demon,” he murmured, and with a quizzi¬ 
cally sad shake of the head he resumed his work. 

Maisie’s elusiveness of late now came back to his 
thoughts. He had noted it with that fugitive preoccupied 
observation that, he supposed, all parents at first bestow 
upon children when those young things show signs of 
growing up. But now, as his hands went on mechanically 
pruning and spading, weeding and binding, his mind 
kept dwelling on Maisie. Where, for instance, did she 
disappear to, as often recently she did disappear of an 
afternoon, particularly of afternoons when he might be 
lying down for a nap after dinner? If he asked her, she 
would reply that she had been “ just walking, daddy.” 

Where did she walk? What on the island interested 
her most? He had thought he knew all about his 


308 


MAISIE 


daughter. But on a sudden, with a sort of chill fright, 
he swung to the opposite extreme and felt overwhelmed 
by the fear that he knew nothing. Never mind — by to¬ 
day or to-morrow he would know more. There should 
be no nap until he knew. What — spy upon Maisie ? 
No! — that was not spying. A man is responsible for 
the welfare of his child. 

That afternoon, as he lay with closed eyes, listening 
intently, he heard Maisie leaving the house. From the 
curtained window he watched. With a throbbing heart 
he saw Maisie, a book under her arm, swinging with 
that charm and free grace of hers up the slope toward 
the spring. Ah, now he understood! Her mother, no 
doubt, had told her of their first meeting there, filling 
the child’s head with romance! The girl was doubtless 

making a sort of shrine of the place. No, no!- 

That was not a good idea. Unwise to let a young girl’s 
mind run in channels like that! He must do something 
about it. No use disturbing Allene now in the next room 
by talking to her about it. He would see. In any case he 
would soon know. 

Softly, with bare feet, carrying his sandals in his hand, 
he stole out of the room, out of the house, put on his 
sandals and followed Maisie up the slope. Why he 
should feel so excited, simply walking in the wake of 
Maisie, he did not know. He smiled whimsically at 
himself. Nevertheless he stalked on with rising excite¬ 
ment up the slope. Already he envisaged Maisie sitting 
there on the old Wishing Stone with her book, reading 

or daydreaming. Daydreaming? Maisie?-But she 

was such a practical young thing. 

When he came to the bougainvillea arch, however, be¬ 
tween the two trees where his view commanded the stone, 
Maisie was not there! 

Now, that was strange! Where else would the child 




THE CIRCLE 


309 


go? What else was there to see — or where to go? Not 
the caves, surely. Oh, no! Maisie was not morbid. She 
was as healthy-minded a girl as he could imagine. A little 
too matter-of-fact, he thought at times. A touch more 
of her mother’s romance, of her idealism, her womanli¬ 
ness, might — might, was his somewhat muddled reflec¬ 
tion — but that was still to come, perhaps ? But where 
could she have gone to? 

Mechanically, but with even a more febrile excitement, 
he continued on over the crest along the faintly marked 
path to the westward side of the island. A confusion of 
thoughts, chaotic, nothing coherent or tangible, was sim¬ 
mering in his brain. 

“We’ll soon see. Mistress Maisie!” he muttered to 
himself. The sound of the surf now came more loudlv 
to his ears, seeming to surround him with a deep organ 
voice that added to the tumult in his mind. 

A white figure! Ah, yes, that was Maisie I 

She was standing alone, erect as a spear on the very 
edge of the beach, with thundering waters on the reef 
almost at her feet, standing erect and gazing seaward. 

Roderic caught his breath as though a blow had been 
suddenly dealt him across the chest. His heart swelled 
abruptly, and as abruptly shrank back against his lungs. 

Maisie — his Maisie — his little daughter I What did 
she want ? She had been the picture of contentment, of 
happiness ! She filled their hearts — his heart — his 
very soul! What did she crave? What in the world 
was calling her? Good God! Could it be that she felt 
imprisoned here as he had felt at Adams Rock ? Like the 
snap of a whip her words about the better garden she 
meant to make suddenly rang out in his ears. But “ she 
didn’t know yet! ” Oh, it was very certain she didn’t 
know! Without quite understanding why, he stood sud¬ 
denly as one overwhelmed in grief — Maisie ! 


310 


MAISIE 


What was calling to her? He gazed at her intently 
with a dreadful, harrowing, nameless anxiety in his heart. 
It sapped him abruptly like a sudden fear. Could she 
too be craving a life other than this, even as he had 
craved? Was there no end, no fixation? Movement, 
change, always movement? Was the world calling to her 
mysteriously as it had called to him? 

Maisie was standing erect, shading her eyes with her 
hand against the westering sun, gazing to the westward 

— toward the world beyond — toward he knew not what 

— gazing out across the sea! 


AFTERWORD, 


In the disillusionizing moment of revelation after read¬ 
ing over this unadorned narrative, in the revulsion of 
feeling before the accomplished enterprise, I am suddenly 
pierced by darts of shame. I had set out to write one 
story and have written another. I had undertaken to 
show that the dominant influence in every man's destiny 
is woman. That do what he will, she draws and shapes 
and molds his life with the power and force of all nature 
behind her. But it became suddenly clear to me: Why 
endeavor to prove the obviousf 

I perceive, however, that another and a different 
rhythm has swayed this narrative. With what poor 
means and lack of skill I hardly dare think, I have in 
reality set forth the life of one man, his present and his 
past, his difficulty in recognizing happiness, the endless 
folly, the tardiness of wisdom, the endless search. What 
I most secretly felt and thought has recorded itself over 
and beyond my original intention. What I seem to have 
written down is no tale about women, of whom Heaven 
knows, I know nothing. But rather the curve, the in¬ 
finitesimal arc of a still tinier angle, — of one man's 
vision, of one man's experience. 

Environment and circumstance have doubtless tended 
to isolate RoderiBs pecidiar history. But it occurs to me: 
Is not every man, even in the most populous quarters, 
tndy isolatedf Does he not in reality live upon an island 
in the midst of a thundering sea? Is not one man's story 
every man's story — and this story perhaps symbolic of 
most? 

I do not know - 

/ do not know! 




. ^ 


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